Archive of Our Own ^beta

I can’t say I remember the moment I woke.

It wasn’t dramatic or loud. There was no miracle chorus or sudden rush of breath.

It was quieter than that… like floating upward from a deep, endless dark I hadn’t realized I’d fallen into.

When my eyes opened, the world hit me all at once.
It was too bright and too loud.

Fluorescent lights glared down from a ceiling that didn’t belong to any place I knew. Machines hummed beside me... what they are and what they do, I don’t even know. The air smelled sharp. Like the disinfectant I used on one of my cleaning part-time gigs before.

I tried to move, but my limbs felt weird. My body felt like it wasn’t truly mine… it was a hollow version of what I remembered, thin and weightless, as if someone had drained the life out of it and left the shell behind.

For a long time, I just lay there, staring at the ceiling, listening to the relentless beep of the monitor. Every sound, every sterile detail reminded me I had survived something I couldn’t yet fully remember.

Why do I feel so weak? I asked, though the words didn’t form on my tongue… they hovered, unsaid. My arms were pins and needles, my legs hushed. I tried to pull my hand up, even a little, and it trembled like it carried a memory that refused to wake. The breath I drew burned.

My mind drifted… because it was easier than facing the present.

I saw him then.

The classmate I’d once wanted to protect.

The boy with the quiet strength… the kind that didn’t need fists to make people listen. There was a calmness about him, steady and sure, but I knew better. I’d seen the cracks beneath it. That calm wasn’t peace; it was armor. A façade built to keep the world at arm’s length, to make sure no one got close enough to see he was breaking, too.

I wondered where he was now.
Did he still sit by the window during lunch? Did he still keep that soft, unreadable look when he thought too much?
Did he ever think of me?

God, I missed him.
I missed the way his silence never felt empty.

And then, I remembered...

My birthday.
Laughter that wasn’t kind.
Feet kicking me over and over again.
Someone filming.
Someone cheering.
The taste of blood and tears mixed together.
The pain.
Then… darkness.

Months. Years. That’s what they told me later.
Years since the man I treated as a friend betrayed me.

They went back to school. Moved on. Lived.

And I stayed here…
rotting quietly under clean white sheets.

That’s when she came in.

My grandmother.

Frail. Every step slow, cautious, as though she feared the fragile glass of hope might shatter if she hurried.

I watched her approach… her face lined with years, with worry, with the faint hope I would wake up when I had no guarantee I ever would.

When her hand brushed mine… I’ll never forget it.

Chilled. Shaking. The same hand that used to knot my shoelaces. That caressed my face when I cried over some small defeat.

Now it clung to my fingers with desperation.

I wanted to say: I’m sorry. I’m sorry I couldn’t be stronger. I’m sorry I made you wait.

But my voice came out as a rasp, a sigh in the static of monitors.

My heart froze for a second.

She smiled anyway. Tears glimmered in her eyes. She said something… her voice small but fierce, proud and scared at the same time.

“My boy is awake.”

My boy.

I used to be the boy who lifted others. Now I was the boy who had been lifted out, left floating.

I saw the years flash: sleeping in empty chairs in classrooms, a delivery motorbike, nights I didn't rest… just to earn the promise I made to her.

And then the darkness. The fight. The fall. And silence.

I looked at her and felt the ache of what I lost: years of rising, of living, of feeling the strength in my muscles, in the fists I had trusted.

Now they were quiet. Hollow.

I realized I couldn’t go back to sleep… not now. Not when she had stayed. Not when she had hoped. 

Her presence held me upright when I could barely lift a breath.

She needed me to wake. So, I did.

And so... I said to myself: I will try. I will fight through the weakness. One breath. One stir. One pain at a time.

Because she stayed. Because some part of me still remembered the promise I made to her. Because even broken, I owed her that much.

And so, I lie here, in this too-white hospital room, holding onto her hand, staring at the ceiling, hearing the beep-beep of machines like the old alarm clocks in the restaurant after midnight.

I’ll learn how to stand again.
I’ll learn how to breathe without pain.
I’ll learn how to be more than the boy who got hurt.

But it’s not going to be easy. Not when the weight of what I once was presses down like an anchor. Not when the truth sits in my chest: I woke up, but I didn’t feel whole. My body hollowed, limbs heavy, voice shattered, and heart remembering too much... I don’t know if I can ever be who I was.

Still, I’ll try… if not for myself, then for her.

Because I can’t let that cowardly voice in my head win... the one whispering that it’d be easier to close my eyes again and disappear into the dark.

I owe her every fucking second, I’ve been given. Every breath that still finds its way into my chest.

And me? Ahn Suho.
Well, I’ve always known one thing better than most:

Breathing matters.

As long as you’re breathing... no matter how broken, you can keep moving forward.