𝙝𝙚𝙧 𝙘𝙖𝙣𝙫𝙖𝙨 • 𝙚𝙣𝙝𝙮𝙥𝙚𝙣 + 𝙨𝙚𝙫𝙚𝙣𝙩𝙚𝙚𝙣

𝘁𝘄𝗲𝗹𝘃𝗲

𝙡𝙚𝙩'𝙨 𝙨𝙞𝙣𝙜 𝙩𝙤𝙜𝙚𝙩𝙝𝙚𝙧 𝙩𝙤 𝙘𝙤𝙫𝙚𝙧 𝙩𝙝𝙚 𝙨𝙖𝙙𝙣𝙚𝙨𝙨 𝙬𝙞𝙩𝙝 𝙩𝙝𝙚 𝙥𝙤𝙬𝙚𝙧𝙛𝙪𝙡 𝙨𝙤𝙣𝙜.

𝘀𝗲𝘃𝗲𝗻𝘁𝗲𝗲𝗻 - 𝗰𝗶𝗿𝗰𝗹𝗲𝘀

The feeling of the warm sunlight that seeped from the open windows of a room was way too familiar for Chaerin. This time, it was peculiar for her to be feeling this. All she knew was that she was floating in some sort of space when the bright light enveloped her with its warmth. There was a surge of coldness in her feet until it travelled throughout her body until she felt warm again.

But Chaerin felt even peaceful when she was trying to stay awake in her mind. There's something serene with how quiet everything is like. Like the feeling of submerging into water, everything's blocked out of her mind. And it rendered her from hearing anything in the distance.

And if she tried to make sense of her surroundings, more pain kept stabbing her more and more in her head. Wait - how was she supposed to feel this way if her last memory was being stabbed? The awareness of being not supposed to live after bleeding out so much in her stomach was too much.

The last thing she remembered after the accident was the feeling of hopelessness. Chaerin still doesn't want to die. She still has so many regrets piling up to all the people she felt indebted to. Most, she doesn't want her children to feel the same way she felt after losing her parents.

To her, she could at least handle at some parts, but them... They lost too much on an early age. She doesn't want to be in their memories labeled as the person who cared for them the most but died early. Chaerin doesn't want them to feel the void of having no parental figure in their life.

They are strong, but again, they are still young.

Chaerin mustered up all strength, feeling the heaviness of her eyelids, and opening them, the first thing she had sighted upon was the white ceiling of the hospital. She's alive. She's alive. She couldn't believe it. After left alone at her thoughts, Chaerin thought that she was stuck forever knowing that she left behind her family into an insanity of talking to herself.

Then she heard the door opened and revealing a middle-aged woman holding a chart in her arms. The woman kept mouthing some words that doesn't make sense to her, rather than her body feeling numb from what she was guessing as the anesthetics. After that commotion, the door opened to reveal some white clad doctor with some confusion painted on his face.

They held up some handheld flashlight to her eyes as if checking if there was something wrong with her body. "Where's my family?" She spoke with a crack in her voice from the long period she hadn't talked. All a sudden, there was a small figure that opened the door...

My lovely Jake. Her hazel brown tinted with green eyes widened, and everything seemed to slow down as she saw her child rushing in to hug her. The thought of almost missing these fleeting moments of being mother scared her. But now, she could feel the warmth of her child in her arms whilst ignoring the pain of her wound on her stomach.

"Eomma," Jake called out as she could feel wetness in her cheeks. Tears fell little by little until Chaerin could feel the dam in her heart shatter as she completely broke down in her child's arms. She missed these hugs; to think that she almost lost her life again was now coming up to the surface, making her savor more of this touching moment.

"Eomma! Eomma! Did you know Heeseung-hyung was very scary when you slept!" Jake complained as he sat next to her in the bed. Chaerin laughed when she saw the young child squirmed out of the nurse's arms when they scolded him from opening the wound in her stomach.

Chaerin grabbed the hairbrush in the bedside table as she began combing through Jake's messy hair. Nara must have been going through much after this incident to forget to remind her children to take a bath. "- And then! Heeseung-hyung was like turn around to us, and I am the only one scared out of all of us!" Jake bragged as Chaerin chuckled in his story.

"But a while ago, you said that he was very scary." Chaerin teased him as Jake widened his eyes in response and pouted at her. "Look, I'm sorry," she added, "Why don't you call your siblings and your uncle and aunt. Tell them that I'm awake."

As they left, the young woman was now by herself along with the occupants of the other patients in the room. Most of them had their curtains closed for privacy. While others were open, dazed in their thoughts or talking with their family at the phone. Chaerin shifted her head to the window next to her bed, looking up to see the serene blue skies with a little cloud.

Is this what others called a second chance? Chaerin still couldn't wrap her head around the concept of being alive. Because she was pretty sure that she's not supposed to be alive right now. "I remembered bleeding out though."

"But I'm happy," she mumbled to herself when the door opened again, but this time, it was her full family. The children sprinted from the other side of the room unlike what Jake did to her, they just fussed over her from the bed.

She noticed that Nara and Minho were just there, standing next to the door with hesitance and guilt painted in their faces. Like they were afraid that they were going to hurt her or that this moment was just a dream. She couldn't help but laugh at them; sure, she knew that this might have traumatized them, but they haven't acted this way to her before.

"Only my kids missed me." Chaerin joked as she beckoned Sunghoon to climb over the bed and patted his head. "But my friends didn't. Look kids, your uncle and aunt doesn't love me anymore. They don't even want to hug me anymore."

This made them break into a smile, and only did they walked towards her bed with Nara shedding some tears. Chaerin locked her gaze into Minho, watching him finally realizing that she was indeed alive. "The first thing you did when you wake up is joke, really?" Minho teased as he ruffled her hair with his shaking hand.

"But I'm fine, see? I'm just so, so happy to be alive."