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“Hello, everyone!” Jisung has the camera up in the air, swinging it left and right to get everyone in the frame. “It’s our second day of filming. We are tired. We are pumped.” He swivels the lens to Hyunjin, who’s shovelling last-minute carbs in. “Hyunjinnie, are you pumped?!”
Hyunjin makes a mildly agreeing noise, and then starts to giggle. This causes him to choke on his food, which causes Minho to perform his own version of the Heimlich maneuver on him, which causes Hyunjin to choke some more and—oh dear.
Seungmin rubs his temples. He regrets coming to the set so early.
“Everyone,” Chan sighs. “Please.”
Alas, it was only polite. They have a big day ahead of them. Everyone’s gone all out, so it’s only fair that Seungmin show the same effort. It’s not like he’s actually dreading anything, anyway. In fact, he is quite excited to please the greater audience. They’ve been long awaiting this concept, after all.
“Seungmin-ah,” one of their managers is ushering him forward, “Your turn for styling.”
“Ooh,” Felix chirps from somewhere behind him. “Minnie, fighting!” Bless Felix. Him and his ability to be pure even at seven in the damn morning.
He steps through the curtain. Usually, they'd all be able to be in the styling room at once, but the location is cramped today. Oh well. It's not a big deal. In fact, it's a better deal. No need to have his ears blown out by half his members.
“Yo, hyung.” Innie waves at him half-heartedly from his spot in the styling chair. Beside him, there's Changbin getting hairsprayed to oblivion. Seungmin would laugh if he didn't know something similar was awaiting him.
“Cutie Innie,” he coos as he sits down and a stylist immediately dabs at him. “So cute. So handsome.”
“Ba—Baby Bread has all grown up,” Changbin sputters. There is a soft laughter that echoes in the room before comfortable silence settles instead.
They're preparing for shoots inside a castle-inspired set today. A dungeon, a ballroom, a gigantic dining area. Seungmin’s getting hyped just thinking about it. His knee bounces rhythmically, which is slightly embarrassing, but he really can't help it. He's a little infamous among staff for the way he simply cannot sit still under any circumstances.
“Mongie,” Chan pokes his head in after Changbin leaves. “You remember what Sangyoon-hyung told you in the car, yeah?”
Seungmin squints through the powder being layered onto his face. “Yep, hyung. I remember.” He scrunches his eyes shut at a stylist's request. “My solo scene's in the ballroom set at eight o'clock, and I have to be there on time because there's a stuntman dressed as Jisung who's going to crash into the chandelier and I'll be under it as it falls—”
“—But it won't actually fall on you,” Chan finishes, then smiles. “Good, Min. To be honest, I should be the least worried about you and your advanced memory system.”
That's exactly right, Bang Chan. “It’s my youthful exuberance. You wouldn't know about it.”
His hyung's smile merely grows fond. “Right, Minnie.” Ugh. Gross. This oldie is so gross. He's become immune to Seungmin's teasing. This is a tragedy. He has to come up with a retaliation when there’s time. Chan is not getting away with this.
The stylists retract from his face. “Good to go, Seungmin-ah.” Oh, perfect.
“Thank you.” He's glad they never really have to spend too much time on his makeup, unlike a certain someone who will smudge it all off before they even start (read: Hwang Hyunjin). He steps out with faint pride.
“And~ Seungminnie has finished makeup!” Jisung’s camera is in his damn face— “Look at him. So handsome. So beautiful. Minnie, so beautiful, huh? You’re so pretty. So sexy. STAY will love this close-up—”
Thanks, Hannie, he thinks. “Agh. Get that out of my face, bug,” he says, because he knows Jisung and knows that if he doesn’t stop him now, there won’t be a stop.
Jisung pouts but moves away to terrorise Innie instead.
The director is calling them over now. It’s time to go. A group filming in the dining area where they’re all posh and prim. At the end of the filming day, hours away from now, they’ll have a massive food fight. Seungmin can’t wait to pour grape juice down Changbin’s shirt. Oh, perfect. He could even smash Minho’s face with a pie. If there is pie. And if Minho doesn’t kill him first. Seriously, hyung is obsessed with him. It’s true!
Chan is gathering them now. Good, good. Seungmin can feel the heat under his skin. There’s anticipation. There’s nervousness. He’s never had to act so refined—so unlike himself, before. He’s hardly a prince. Though the members and fans suggest otherwise, Seungmin is very sure he’s a far cry from the dignified image he’s seemed to create. He doesn’t want to be, anyway. He isn’t, won’t ever be, someone within the lines.
Still, Seungmin will try to be bendable. Mouldable. Chin up, let's do this.
Fulminare
verb
/fulmi'nare/
to strike with lightning, to strike down
Felix has a pit in his stomach. He wonders if it’s nerves or if God is trying to tell him something.
“Okay, in three, two…”
The others always tell him he has an impeccable sixth sense. Innie looks at him sometimes and calls him ‘sent by God to ascertain divine power’, whatever that means. Felix isn’t sure they’re right. In fact, he’s not sure why they have so much faith in his gut feeling in the first place. His. Intestinal movement. Maybe Felix just has indigestion. That’s what Pinterest says, anyway.
“One! Action!”
Action.
Felix glances left. There’s Hyunjin, Minho. To the right, Chan, Innie, Jisung. Changbin is in front of him and Seungmin is behind. He wonders why he feels so sick when he was feeling pretty okay this morning.
He tries to push it back. Thinks, There isn’t time for this. I have to show my best.
“Seungmin-ah!” Manager Seona is calling Seungmin from the back. “Time to go! Get freshened up and meet us in five.”
“Yes, noona!” Seungmin yells back, and then hurriedly jogs away. Felix watches him go. Usually, he’d pay attention to the cute way Seungmin doesn’t move his arms as he runs, or the eagerness that just wafts off of him.
Felix just feels sick, though. He has to rip his gaze away, unless he wants to puke all over the stage floor.
Maybe he’s just nervous-happy for Seungmin. Maybe that’s it. That’s all. He's filming a big scene, after all.
“Lixie, c’mon.” Changbin is grabbing his arm with an easy smile. “We’ve gotta change. Let’s go.”
No—Don’t—
“Okay, hyung.”
Thing is, if Changbin, or Seungmin, or anyone other than Felix, knew how bad his stomach was churning, they’d drop everything immediately.
Fulsome
adjective
/ˈfʊl.səm/
flattering to an excessive or sickening degree, over-the-top
“Ah, sorry, I’m pretty nervous.” He can’t help it. He must jump around on the spot or he’ll implode. Seungmin can’t remember the last time he felt so jittery. This must mean something big. Seona smiles at him.
“It’s alright. I’d be scared in your position, too.” It brings Seungmin little comfort.
“That’s a very large chandelier,” he ends up saying.
And it’s…supposed to drop? Not on him, but very damn near it? Is that really safe?
One of the staff, probably a technician, nods. “It’s quite magnificent, isn’t it? Budget’s all out this time around. M’sure your fans will love it.”
Seungmin just blinks at the hanging fixture. He feels slightly nauseous at the idea of something so fucking big and definitely heavy, hurtling down at him from what has to be at least five meters. But he supposes that’s showbiz, baby! Or whatever the line was from the drama Felix was watching last night.
“I believe it’s real and costly,” another staff adds. Seungmin doesn’t doubt it. “Weighs a ton. You see all those glass crystals? Apparently, each one cost more than ninety thousand won!”
Oh God.
“Yet Seungmin-ssi will still be the centrepiece,” someone laughs. Seungmin would, on any other day, flush red and bow at the waist. Current Seungmin is too high-strung to really react. In honesty, the idea hadn’t seemed so bad in the car this morning. Now he’s here, five minutes until shoot, and he wants out.
Does he suddenly not trust the staff? The stuntman, maybe? He hasn’t actually met the guy, and might not until the shoot is over. Oh, this is so stupid. Nothing’s going to happen, Seungmin. Man up and do it already.
You can’t seriously be this scared of taking some risks.
“Seungmin-ah?” Seona nudges him forward. “You ready?”
He wants to ask someone. To at least verbally confirm that the thing isn’t going to snap as it falls.
Just do it, Seungmin. Is this not what your group’s all about?
No. He can’t do that. That’ll imply he doesn’t trust them. He does trust them. He does, so he must.
“I’m ready, noona.” He steps forward. Then again, and again. He wonders, a little randomly, what Minho would say if he knew about how cowardly Seungmin was feeling. It’s that little, made-up scenario of shame that gets him to the centre of the set.
He doesn’t dare glance up at what he knows is above him. The staff give him pointed thumbs, so he must be in the correct position. Oh dear, oh fuck. This is happening.
He’s not even supposed to do much. Nothing crazy. Just lip sync like, two words, bow and hold the fucking pose like his life depends on it. They can technically have more than one take, but the chandelier’s appearance will drop with every one. So. The first shot really is the most important.
He practised this. Minus the actual thing. But he still practised. He can do this. He can lip sync. He can bow. He can…stay still. He can do this.
“Fighting, Min-ah!” Seona calls from the front. Seungmin tries his best to smile.
Fulmar
noun
/ˈfʊl.mər/
a bird of the open seas, hardly stepping onto land
Test, testing. One, two, three.
Let’s go.
“Alright, Seungmin-ah!” the director’s voice booms from the speakers. It’s boisterous. It’s loud. Seungmin feels the teensiest bit of amusement bubble in his chest.
“Dude,” Jisung stretches his legs a little. “I wanna go watch Minnie’s solo. Yen, wanna come?” He lifts himself off the breakroom couch and holds his hand out dramatically. “Don’t you wanna support your sexy Meong-hyung?”
The music begins to play. Seungmin closes his eyes, just as directed. He tries to relax his body. Think: elegant. Think: prince. This is going to be incredible to watch back.
Jeongin rolls his eyes. “Sure, hyung.” And Felix quietly calls to them to be careful. They blink at him, confused, but nod anyway.
He breathes deep. Stay calm. Everything’s alright. You’re just anxious.
“I hope we haven’t missed it,” Jisung giggles, pulling Innie forward. “Oh, please—”
It’s just him. And the stuntman. Dressed as Jisung.
They continue their mildly speedy pace.
Jisung. Right. Think of him as Jisung. Seungmin trusts Jisung. Everything’s fine.
“Come on, come on.” Jisung is giddily surging his cam forward. They trip over themselves.
“Okay, in three, two…”
“Here, hyung. Here.”
“And, now!”
“Wow.” They stare.
A crash. A swing.
Now—Bend—
Wait—No—
The chandelier falls.
Hold—
A snap.
NO—
Twin screams. Neither of which Seungmin hears.
Glass scatters across the floor. There’s red. It drips. And it is a film from there.
Fulminant
adjective
/ˈfʊlmɪnənt/
an event or process that occurs suddenly and escalates quickly
Chan is out at Jeongin’s shriek. Then there’s Jisung’s a millisecond after. Minho and Changbin blur out. Felix blinks. There are more screams, foreign, probably the staff. He stands. Glances sideways. Hyunjin is already standing.
They stare at each other. Felix feels like a block of ice. Hyunjin looks horrified.
“Lix.” He grabs Felix’s arm. “C’mon. Lix, c’mon.” Felix lets Hyunjin drag him. He can’t feel much. Just an impending sense of doom and: I knew it, I knew it, I knew—
People are screaming. Many people. Too many people. Felix feels like screaming too but he can’t even open his mouth. Wrong. Wrong, everything’s all wrong—
“Oh fuck.” Hyunjin says as they stop running. He then repeats the words again and again, voice becoming more and more frayed, thin, choked as he goes on. His nails are digging into Felix’s arm. Felix feels nauseous. Felix feels cold. Felix—
He peeks over Hyunjin’s shoulder.
There’s blood. Trails and pools and splatters of it. Spilling across the floor like spiderwebs.
In the centre. A broken chandelier. The chandelier, actually. It’s objectively pretty, or would be, if it weren’t stained red. Wasn’t Seungmin supposed to be under—
No.
No.
“NO!” Jisung shrieks. His head pounds.
Hyunjin’s dragging Felix forward again. Forward, towards—
“Minnie,” he chokes. Pathetically.
Hyunjin lets go and rushes forward. Felix stumbles, then drops to his knees. It hurts, but he can’t think much about anything except Seungmin. Seungmin, who’s under there. Seungmin, whose eyes are glassy and head is bleeding and legs are bent all wrong—
He looks dead already. Felix clamps his hands over his mouth and tries to swallow bile back down. He can’t throw up here, or now. He can’t. He can’t—
“We need to slide him out.” Chan’s voice is so very choked. If Felix’s world hadn’t blurred down to Seungmin’s face, he’d realise his leader was, in fact, crying. “Do—Don’t touch him too much. Just…slide him out once we lift the chandelier.”
Felix whimpers against his hands.
He wants to move. He needs to fucking move. All he can do is watch in muted horror as his members and staff rally around the chandelier, and Minho holds Seungmin’s shoulders until his knuckles are white.
His world narrows again. Seungmin appears to be awake, at the very least. His eyes are blown wide and his eyebrows are scrunched in terror. Felix catches his eye for a second before it drifts away to nowhere. Felix wants to lunge at him and shake him.
“—Two, one. Up!” A series of groans and yells. The chandelier just barely moves off of Seungmin and Felix dreads to think too hard about how heavy that thing is. Fuck. He’s bleeding so much. He’s bleeding so much.
Minho shuffles back and brings Seungmin’s limp body with him. Felix thinks he hears a groan, but there’s too much noise, and Jisung’s still screaming, still begging.
“Okay, I’ve got you, Seungminnie. I’ve got you.”
The chaos dies down minutely as Minho cushions Seungmin’s head in his lap. Sangyoon-hyung, Felix faintly thinks, is yelling about space. And quiet. And space.
“Ambulance is twelve minutes out!” Someone shouts. Felix looks at Seungmin, who’s getting paler by the second and knows: they don’t fucking have twelve minutes.
Seungmin is going to die.
Chan is kneeling—practically bent—over Seungmin. He’s whispering sweet nothings to the boy. Seungmin looks at his hyung, dazed beyond belief. Felix, at this point, can only stare. He is so helpless. He is so fucking helpless and it’s killing him.
Fulciment
noun
/ˈfu̇lsəmənt/
prop, support, centre of gravity
Minho’s hands shake violently over Seungmin’s pale skin.
“You can’t,” he whispers. “You can’t do this, Kim Seungmin.”
He can hear and feel Chan’s ragged breaths so wholly, he may as well be breathing for all three of them. His hyung leans down over Seungmin’s face, and he must not like whatever he finds because his breathing becomes even harsher.
“Shit. Shit, Min, he’s not breathing properly.”
Minho could’ve guessed that. He’s been staring at Seungmin for what feels like hours now. His eyes are fluttering, lips turning grey, and what concerns him the most: One side of his chest isn’t rising properly.
Seungmin makes a gurgling, raspy noise, and Minho has to adjust his head in his lap so it doesn’t loll too far back. There’s pink-ish foam at the corner of his lips.
Shit.
“I think he landed on his chest. Hard.” Seona kneels beside them, phone shaking in her grip. “He might’ve broken something.”
Might’ve. Minho inwardly scoffs. Definitely broke something.
Seungmin coughs again. His eyes go wide with strained gasps. He’s struggling to breathe.
“Shh,” Chan coos softly, brushing his cheek. “It’s okay, Minnie. You’re okay.”
There's so much blood. Too much. Why?
Minho takes a deep breath. He needs to calm down. He needs to think. Seungmin just had a, what? Six kilo, fragile object, slam into him from the ceiling? There’s glass everywhere, some in his hair, some in his palms. Minho knows the cuts on his head look worse than they actually are. Or so he hopes. The shards were small. Surely they couldn’t have done too much damage. They're just…bleeding a lot because that's what head wounds do.
“Seungie, no.” Chan taps the boy’s cheek. “No sleeping. Keep breathing, okay? Keep breathing with me.”
He’s also definitely got a concussion of sorts. There’s no possibility otherwise. Seeing as he’s still at least somewhat conscious, it’s not too horrifically bad. Or, it’s not the injury they have to worry about the most.
“Please, Minnie. Please.” Jisung wails over Hyunjin’s hushes.
His legs might be fractured, twisted, broken. His left one in particular looks very alarming. It’s definitely broken. His foot is just hanging.
“Eyes open, puppy. Eyes on hyung.”
Fuck, there’s a possibility he’s paralysed, too. He might’ve hit the spine somewhere. His legs hadn’t moved at all on their own since Minho got to him. They shouldn’t move him too much or at all. God, he hopes there’s nothing permanent. Seungmin’ll be crushed. Minho will be crushed.
“Chan-ah. His breathing’s getting worse.”
Minho’s gaze snaps back to Seungmin’s face. It’s true. His lips are turning frightening blue, and it seems the more blood Chan wipes from his mouth, the more of it bubbles up. His hand—the one that had been clutching Minho’s sleeve—is starting to lose its grip.
No. No. You are not dying here, or now. You cannot. I will not let you.
“Fuck.” Minho doesn’t bother to hide the shake in his voice. “He’s—”
I will drag you back myself.
Wheezy breathing, blue lips, blood-tinted froth. Seungmin’s got—
“—A punctured lung,” Chan finishes. And then Minho slides Seungmin off his lap and flat onto the ground. And Seungmin’s breath is so thin it nearly takes Minho’s with it. Minho so wishes he could take his own breath and give it to Seungmin. This isn’t fair. None of this is fair.
“Minnie,” Chan murmurs. Minho watches his hyung’s tears fall onto Seungmin’s face. “Minnie, please. Don’t do this.”
Vaguely, Minho registers Changbin and Jeongin running back into the room, arms full of cloth, bandages, damn cling wrap—none of that’s going to be useful. Not for this, anyway. Not for Seungmin’s life, anyway.
“T—Two minutes away,” Seona shakily says. She’s backing away from them, like she’s giving them space. Like she knows what’s going to happen.
Minho knows too. Minho does. He’s just not fucking ready.
“No.” Jisung’s voice is getting louder. Minho knows he’s been watching Seungmin’s chest like a hawk. “No, Minnie—NO—”
“Not breathing,” Chan utters, suddenly void of all emotion. Minho’s vision zeros in on Seungmin’s lax mouth. “Not breathing. Start compressions.”
Minho blinks, and Seungmin’s body is jerking under the force of Chan’s arms. There is a small part of him that simply wants to keel over right then and there.
Minho’s hands shake, but he keeps Seungmin’s head tilted back, chin up. He counts Chan’s compressions. “Fifteen, sixteen…”
“Shit.” He hears Changbin collapse beside them. “Shit. Fuck.”
“That’s good.” Even Sangyoon sounds shaky, but then again, why would he not fucking be? “That’s good, Chan. Good. Keep going.”
His head buzzes. Twenty-two, twenty-three, twenty-four.
Everything he was required to learn at the company’s request suddenly comes flooding back. Minho blocks out Felix’s retching. Jisung’s sobbing. Everything comes down to Seungmin. He is not breathing. He is not breathing.
One hand on the forehead. Other on the chin. Pinch the nose, open the mouth.
“Thirty. Chan-hyung, off.”
As soon as Chan’s hands leave Seungmin’s chest, Minho is gasping and sealing his mouth over Seungmin’s.
Good seal. No gaps. Blow. One second. Stop. Watch.
Seungmin’s chest rises faintly.
Watch. Chest has fallen. No manual breath. Go again. A second time. Breathe again—Pinch nose—No seal—Blow—Watch—Fucking WATCH—
“Good, Minho.”
Light returns. His head buzzes.
“Hyung,” Changbin all but shoves Chan’s shaking arms away from Seungmin’s chest. “I’ll do this set.”
Chan is crying again, muffled sounds into his hands. Minho precariously touches his own face and finds that he, too, is breaking down. Seems like blowing air into an unresponsive body is more debilitating than he thought. It doesn’t help that the body is Seungmin’s.
Still, he tries to watch. Count Changbin’s compressions. A loud crack resonates through the haze. Fuck, fuck. Just a rib, Minho. Just a rib. It’s normal. It’s so normal. Don’t fucking lose it. Do. Not.
But Minnie is just lying there. He’s just—He’s not fucking—
“Twenty-nine—”
Hyunjin, too, shoves him away from Seungmin. Minho wants to yell and scream if not for the fact that all the air has left his lungs. He watches with blurry vision as Hyunjin bends down and does the same procedure. Thirty compressions, two breaths. That’s the cycle. They will keep doing that until Seungmin is breathing again. Minho would rather die than stop.
Come on, Jinnie. Pinch the nose—yes. Seal—One second—just one, fuck. Yes. Again—quickly—please—
“Please…” He thinks Innie is whispering somewhere behind him. The world comes back in pieces. Please, please…
A rise.
On Hyunjin’s second breath, Seungmin jerks. There is a chorus of sobs. Minho feels breath again.
Thank God, thank fuck. Shit. Please never do that again. Never.
“Here!” Seona’s voice echoes from the back. “He’s in here!”
Ambulance. Paramedics. Fuck. Minho feels more tears well up in his eyes.
He faintly hears Sangyoon informing the medics of the current situation. Prop fell on him, had to start CPR, yes, yes, no, yes. Minho tunes it out. He just stares at Seungmin, who is blinking awake. His breaths are still raspy—probably because of his fucking collapsed lung—but it’s there, and that’s all Minho can really count on. The medics push Hyunjin and Changbin away. Seungmin is covered by them.
Please just fucking save him. Don’t let him die.
It’s more so a daze after that. Chan argues with Sangyoon for a few moments before they both decide that, yes, it’s for the better that Sangyoon ride in the ambulance instead of Chan, who is near hyperventilating into his arms. Minho tries to come back to himself. He lies down on the wet floor and stares at the half-constructed ceiling. He can see where the chandelier severed. The cord is frayed, like someone took a bite out of it.
This is so fucking stupid. This was so fucking avoidable.
Minho blinks. With a rasp, “I cannot fucking believe he got crushed by a fucking chandelier.”
“I know,” Hyunjins half-moans, half-sobs.
“We had to resuscitate him.”
“I know,” Hyunjin sniffs.
“He still might not make it.”
“I know, hyung.”
Jisung suddenly lets out an ear-piercing shriek into the floorboards. Minho thinks, That’s right. That’s so fucking right, Hannie.
Fule
noun
/ˈfᵫ̅l /
A variant of fool
Felix pukes. It’s almost relieving.
“Oh dear, Yongbokie.” Changbin is holding his hair back as he coughs and spits. Through the blur, he thinks Innie wipes his mouth.
“Hy—Hyung,” he rasps. Changbin makes a noise. “Hyung, I kn—knew, I felt it. I’m so—sorry—”
“No, Lix-hyung.” Jeongin tilts his chin up until he’s looking at him. “You couldn’t have predicted this. Maybe your gut was telling you something, but this was not your fault.”
Felix just sobs. Changbin pulls him into his arms. “It’s okay, yeah? Minnie’s going to be okay. He’s on the way to the hospital now. He’s in good hands.” Felix just stares at the wreckage in front of him. Jisung and Minho are curled up on the floor together, Chan is…having a meltdown, one that has Seona-noona worriedly hovering over him.
He cannot believe Hwang Hyunjin is the one passing water around. Granted, he’s sobbing, but still. Still. Seungmin is going to laugh at them for this. Hopefully. Probably. If he doesn’t die in that ambulance.
Shit. Don’t think about that. Do. Not.
“Not your fault, hyung,” Innie repeats.
Felix thinks, It’s no one’s fault, really. But it especially isn’t Seungmin’s.
He vows to not let Seungmin know how bad it really was. He thinks, the others do the same.
fuliginous
adjective
/fjuːˈlɪdʒɪnəs/
sooty, obscure
“Please, please…”
It takes eight days for Seungmin to wake up in hospital. The first thing he sees is a bush of blonde hair. He cannot move.
Lixie, he says with his mouth, no sound.
Felix seems to watch his oxygen mask fog. He looks like shit and Seungmin wishes he could tell him such.
Also, what the fuck. Why is he in a hospital bed.
The other simply smiles. Something of relief shines in his eyes. “Minnie. Fuck. You scared all of us.”
He wants to snap upright when Felix tells him about the malfunction, and how long he’s been out. Why are you even here? He wants to ask. The clock ticks, and says: three twenty-seven. It’s still dark out. He can’t think very straight, but he knows visiting hours must be over.
Felix, because he is Felix and Seungmin is Seungmin, sighs. “I couldn’t…stay all alone in our apartment, Min. You…” He stops there. Or maybe Seungmin stops listening. The ceiling is blurring again. He wants to rest, but he also wants to see Felix.
“Sleep, Seungie.” A hand over his eyes. “I love you. And I’m…”
It’s a good dream.
The others visit in the morning. Felix is still at his side. Still there when he wakes.
They all look traumatised. Seungmin doesn’t think he has the mental capacity to process this, but he does feel guilty. He thinks, maybe if he had backed out, none of this would’ve happened.
“Minnie,” Jisung sniffs. Then, all the dams break.
Chan launches into his side and genuinely starts bawling. Seungmin blinks at him in alarm because what the hell. Minho catches his eye with a gleam that says, deal with it, you fuck. Seungmin has an inkling they are keeping so much from him, but he’s too tired to care.
“You stopped breathing,” Hyunjin blurts out one night. Seungmin thinks, Ah, there is it.
At least it was him and not one of them.
“I was about to start compressions after Hyunjin-ah,” Sangyoon nods. He seems relieved. Seungmin feels relieved, hell. “I think it’s a good thing it didn’t come to that.”
You would’ve concaved my chest in, Seungmin inwardly croaks in agreement.
Minho starts crying again when he sees Seungmin stand up by himself.
Ten days later. “Uh…” Seungmin’s mouth moves.
Jisung is immediately at his bedside. Then, everyone else is too. “Yes, baby? What’s wrong? Does it hurt? Are you hungry? Do you want kimchi jigae? Minho-hyung can make some for you—”
Hyunjin wacks his forehead. “Ji, shut the fuck up.”
“Did…” Seungmin rasps. They all lean in closer to hear him.
“Did you…do CPR…to…S-Class…”
What.
Felix bursts into tears.
“Sorry, Min.” Chan laughs a little wetly. “I used Get Lit.”
Innie stares. “You used what—”
“I used Stars and Raindrops, actually,” Changbin smirks, like a liar. Seungmin smiles in response, though, so no one calls him out.
“Thank you,” he whispers. Chan snores into his side in response.
“It’s gonna be alright, hyung.” Innie smiles at him. “Everything’s gonna be fine.”
“Never take risks ever again,” Jisung sobs—he has been actively sobbing for three weeks now. “And we’re also never doing a royal concept ever. Ever. Fuck that.”
Seungmin shrugs, or, does a small motion that imitates one, because he can absolutely get behind that.
“I’m suing everyone, by the way,” Seona informs him. Well, okay. He’s not sure what he was expecting.