Drowning in the Distance

XVIII | Donghyuck

Fucking hell, she's beautiful. I can't take my eyes off her. The way the ribbon wraps around her locks, the way the white rose looks tucked behind her ear and, God, the way she keeps looking at me... I don't feel like any of this is real. I feel like I'm in some kind of lucid dream or comatose state, and she's my salvation, an angel. If it turned out that this was all some experimental drug-induced haze, I wouldn't be all that surprised; the way my breath catches in my throat and the way my head is dizzy with excitement. I feel like an entirely new person, to be honest. I've never felt this way about anyone before; all my relationships had been centred around living fast and dying young. Plus, I'd always be leaving for a new hospital, so I never stayed anywhere or with anyone long enough to really fall for anyone. Not that I would have, given the chance. None of them made me feel even a quarter of the way that Y/N does, and I mean that. This floating feeling, this semblance of a fever dream, this lightheaded and fuzzy feeling are completely new. Maybe that's why I never knew how to act around her, because I didn't understand or I didn't like it, but now that I'm embracing the feeling rather than pushing it away, it feels fucking incredible. I feel like I could climb Everest or, I don't know, run a marathon. I feel the pool cue stop moving, snapping me from my thoughts. We're stopped before a huge fish tank, her face reflecting the blue light that emits from it. She looks positively radiant. It takes everything in me to look away from her, and to look over at the brightly coloured fish, but even as I do, I watch her reflection upon the glass rather than what's inside of it.

"When I was really little, I used to sit and stare at the fish for hours, wondering what it would feel like to be able to hold my breath long enough to swim like they do." She says, following my gaze but assuming that I was watching the small orange and white fish that swims quickly around the tank near her face. I look at her in surprise; I knew she'd been coming to Saint Evangeline's for a while, I gathered that from when Jaemin told me that the pair of them knew just about everyone who came through the ward and the way that she greeted everyone in the hospital on the day I met her, but I didn't know she'd been here when she was a little kid. I turn to look at her, no longer bothering to hide the fact that I'm staring.

"How young?" I ask, my voice hushed and tone showing genuine interest. I keep my gaze on her, watching her glittering orbs following the fish as it swims upward before nosediving back down to the bottom.

"Six. Doyoung, Irene and Dr. Moon were there on my first day, and they've made good company all these years, but Jaemin was there too. We just clicked, me and him. The staff would have to prepare if they knew the both of us would be here at the same time. We'd constantly run down to the playrooms and feed the fish tiny pieces of doughnut, and it would always be Doyoung who came running after us and giving us a fatherly lecture." Six. Jesus. That's a long ass time... I can't even imagine being in one place that long, not with the way I moved around as a kid. Not that any of that was decided by me. We walk, hands connected by the cue, through the double doors into the main entrance, the stairwell's dingy light flickering in front of us. She turns back to look at me for a moment, tugging on the pool cue and nodding towards it. "Let's take the stairs." I'm sorry, what? Did she just say the stairs? The fucking stairs? I look at her, eyes narrowed and jaw dropped, as though she'd grown a second head. Maybe it's just because I'm unfit, but my lungs burn from just the sight of the stairs. They burn even more at the thought of it, the memories my trips up to the roof and the physical exhaustion that came alongside them. Not exactly the most attractive of looks for me, if I'm honest. If she wants this date to last longer than the twenty minutes it'll take for me to be knocked out on a bench at the top, there is no way we're about to walk up those stairs. Her eyes flicker over my face, scanning it carefully before she breaks into a teasing smile. "I was joking, Hyuck. We can if you want to, though." I've never shaken my head faster.