UNTOUCHABLE YOU | MINSUNG

10

"Does the body rule the mind
Or does the mind til the body?
I don't know."
-still ill-

It is currently three and a half in the afternoon and everyone is exhausted. The number of employees who finished their chores increased and eventually, the only ones who are still working are Chan, Jisung, keeho, and Hongjoong, two other employees who joined to help reassemble new tables and chairs.

The job is almost done, the front of the restaurant is now fully decorated with different plants, flowers, and brand-new furnitures. The inside of god's menue is now perfectly clean with brand-new cutlery and tableware.

However, if you tilt your head from the entrance of the restaurant a little bit to the left towards the wall of the building, you can find a pile of garbage that is a meter tall, and five meters in diameter, and it contains a bunch of old furnitures, expired food, a surprisingly large amount of cloths and fabrics, and a LOT of paper.

Jisung is drained out of every bit of energy in his body. Two hours of hard work in the blazing sun doesn't do well to his weak body. Jisung isn't some athlete, nor does he have any intention of working out, hence why his endurance and cardio level is so low that he gets all breathy from walking up the stairs at school. Honestly, Jisung isn't even sure if his gym teacher knows who he is because he attended to his class maybe twice since the beginning of his sophomore year, and he's a junior now. He might get in trouble, but at this point he believes that everything is better than working out with a bunch of sweaty teenagers.

Of course, the work at the restaurant is hard for everyone, but after only one hour of work, everyone was still pretty much energetic and awake, while Jisung began to have difficulty breathing, and the heat definitely didn't help.

"Chan," Jisung calls to his friend, who is now busy carrying the last chairs. Jisung's breath is hitching, and his arms are aching from soreness; Little scratches from wood chips are visible on the palms of his hand and on his bare ankles.

Chan turned his attention to him, whipping droplets of sweat from his forehead. "Is everything ok?"
"Can I take a break? It's getting hard to breath," Jisung mumbles, tucking behind his ears strands of stray hairs

Chan knows about Jisung's asthma, he wasn't originally going to allow him to work with them on such a tiring job but the Jisung insisted that he will be fine so Chan assumed it'll be okay.

"Jisung.." Chan sighs, pinching the bridge of his nose "I told you you shouldn't work with us.. do you want me to come with you?" Chan's voice is a mix of annoyance and worry, he is annoyed at Jisung's stubbornness that can actually be dangerous for him and he is more angry at himself for giving into it.

"No, it's fine, I've got this." Jisung reassurs him briefly and heads inside the restaurant to get some rest. Chills go down his spine as the strong AC is freezing every single drop of sweat over his body. Making him feel like he just got out of an ice bath.

He needs to get his inhaler from the back room, he's lucky that he remembered to put it in his backpack this morning. Jisung was actually diagnosed with asthma when he was seven after he almost died from a seizure, his adoptive parents got tired of him getting an attack every other two months and took him to the doctor's office. Even though the inhaler is usually used for his asthma attacks, Jisumg finds it pretty useful for his anxiety attacks that sometimes got so bad that he would faint.

Lately, he has been using it more often than usual since he realized that the pattern of short breathing has become more rapid; And right now he feels as if his windpipe was almost blocked and his breathing became harder and sloppier.

Jisung harries to the back room where he pulles his big red backpack out of the pile of bags that rests on the floor.

Without thinking twice he shoves his hand inside, looking blindly for the blue tube out of all the junk inside his bag.

Jisung becomes more hysterical each moment in which his breathing is getting rapidly worse and his rescue inhaler can't be found. His hands are starting to shake in a mixed attack of asthma and anxiety. He takes out and random objects from his bag and throws them on the floor in search for the blue tube; sunglasses, a notebook, a pack of tissues, an old candy which is probably a few months old, some random papers, keys, and a lot more junk, but no inhaler.

It has never happened to him before, every time in which he feels an attack coming up he would easily reach out for the blue tube and inhale the medicine into his lungs. But at that moment, the feeling of helplessness and weakness fell upon his shoulders as he only gets more hysterical in each second that passes.

In a rush of dirty coughs and gasps for air Jisung gives up on finding the inhaler. He launches his bag across the room in frustration and squats down on the floor with his thighs pressed to his chest, head on his knees, and hands on his ears as he tries to focus on his breathing, with no much success.

He can still hear the voices of people rushing into the room and asking him questions that are being translated into murmurs in his brain.

He feels hands on his shoulders, trying to shake him into consciousness and different voices that he can't recognize their owners. He feels as if he's hearing everything from under the water, so weirdly quiet and blurry. But the gloomy sound of water that surrounds him, gets mixed with the sound of his pounding heartbeats that are aiming to rip open his chest.

"-his inhaler!" Jisung hears a shadow of Chan's voice that sounds like a dream in his head.

His breathing only slowly becomes faster and harder to control, his lungs feel like balloons that would explode at any given moment. His head throbs in pain and his coughs are bruising his throat. His whole body shakes in hysteria from the asthma attack, only getting his anxiety bigger until it slowly takes over on his mind and body.

Everything is way too overwhelming, his short breaths, the blurry sound of people in the back of his head, the sound of his own thoughts, the feeling of choking, it all presses tight on Jisung's chest like a dumbbell. But suddenly, all the weight is being lifted, everything stops, and Jisung is comforted by the silence that wraps him like a blanket.

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Tiny shorty little chapter for y'all today:)

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