The Tells of a Different Childhood

26. New Fruit

His friends had their quirks.

As he had long figured out, they had made it their mission to get him to try every single Korean staple/popular snack since he had missed out on them for the past ten years.

After having a particularly negative reaction to kimchi, which was apparently an acquired taste (Just a shorter way to say the food version of Stockholm's syndrome), they decided to just give him a fruit today.

They had declared their collective love of lychee as well as their horror upon finding out that he had never tried the fruit. After Yeona agreed to bring some from her Grandfathers trees, that is what they were doing currently.

They were crowded around his and Yeongchans desk like usual, all of them happily reaching for the container of fruit that was on the desktop.

He looked at the other's reactions, and after hearing the small hum of satisfaction from Jaehyung, he decided that it was time to try it.

He bit into the small red fruit and almost immediately, he had to resist the urge to cough.

The lychee was almost overwhelmingly spicy. The moment he swallowed it, his tongue and throat started to tingle uncomfortably like that time he accidentally ate one of 015 'chile de Arbol that nearly made him sweat through his clothes.

This was nowhere near as good as the others made it out to be. How could anyone like them?

He left the other half of the fruit on the desk. No way in hell was he going to finish that.

Seokju sighed as he picked up another lychee to bite into," These are rather sweet."

The urge to cough got stronger.

...sweet??

Yeona smiled," Yes! Grandfather picked them at just the right time. I want to make them into a syrup later on."

...people didn't make spicy fruits into syrups...

Hm...

Slightly concerning.

"Uh, Ijin?" Yeongchan asked as he bit into another supposedly sweet lychee," Is there something wrong?"

His throat started to itch.

He was starting to think something was wrong.

He coughed into his hand and struggled to resist the urge to follow that up with another cough," It was spicy." His voice came out husky, as if he had something in his throat that was affecting it.

That made them stare at him, all of them stopping in the middle of their movement to stare at him with wide eyes.

He lost the fight and coughed into his hand again, feeling a tingle of panic when he realized that his throat felt tighter than usual.

The sound of chairs scraping back on the floor almost assaulted his ears as he heard his friends leap into action.

"Fucking shit he's allergic !!"

Good to know something was wrong like he thought.

He just couldn't stop coughing, his throat getting tighter each minute that went by.

"Someone call an ambulance!!"

Oh, this was bad.

This wasn't something he could play off. Nor was it something he could wait out.

He coughed even harder, the back of his throat stinging with the effort he was putting into it. His hand instinctively went up to his throat, unconsciously trying to find whatever was restricting his breathing.

"Who has an epi-pen!?"

He curled in on himself, holding onto the table tightly as he hacked and coughed into his hand.

It was getting harder to breathe.

It felt like someone had wrapped their hands around his neck, and was slowly squeezing until his airway was completely cut off.

"Hyeokjin!!" the pure panic he could hear in Jaehyungs voice was not helping.

"I know I know!!"

Arms wrapped around his shoulders, keeping him from falling out of the chair as reflex tears beaded at the corner of his eyes.

"Hurry it up!!" he distantly realized that it had been Seokju that was supporting him as he snapped out his words.

He could hear his own wheezing breaths. Someone was telling him to stop coughing-Yeona his mind helpfully supplied- which was something he would have stopped if he had been able to.

He could feel his face turning colors as he was forced to breathe through what felt like a pen cap.

This was just as bad as the time his handler decided that he could handle being strangled since he was the (then) oldest and needed an example for the others.

"Hyeokjin!!"

The sound of triumph sounded far too distant for his liking.

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The feeling of something rubbing against the back of his hand made him jerk awake. He pulled away from whatever was holding his hand and was in the process of rolling out of bed when another hand was on his shoulder.

"Ijin," The voice was whispered but was enough to make him stop.

His eyes stung slightly as he opened them, his pupils quickly adjusting to the dim lighting of wherever he was.

He felt sluggish as he blinked at Major Kang.

His eyebrows were scrunched up like they did when the major was worried," You had an allergic reaction," The older man whispered out, his tone gentle as Ijin continued to blink sluggishly at him," You're here in the hospital. Its almost the middle of the night."

Major Kang was answering the questions he didn't even realize that he had.

A glass rim was being pressed against his lips, and he accepted the water without question. He hadn't even realized how dry his mouth was. Or how much his throat hurt.

He had been propped up, allowing him to see the sleeping forms of Dayeon and Grandfather at the bottom of his bed.

He felt just as exhausted as they looked.

A hand landed on top of his head, it took him a little bit longer than he liked to admit to realize that it was the Major's hand, gently ruffling his hair," Go back to sleep," the way Kang's hand was running through his hair only made him even drowsier. His eyes were already drooping closed again when he heard," We'll talk in the morning."

He agreed without a second thought.

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