Make me eat my words || Taegyu

Chapter 8

As Beomgyu woke to the feeling of searing, debilitating pain, he made a mental vow to never get stabbed again. Because of the pain, yes, but also because of how damn hard it'd been to wake up. It was like trying to dig to the bottom of a huge container of cotton that refilled itself every thirty seconds. But eventually, he was able to force his eyes open despite the figurative bags of lead weighing them down, blinking blearily up at the lights on the ceiling.

The first thing he saw was an extremely pretty woman, her beauty almost unrealistic. She smiled down at him, and he squinted, trying to make out any possible flaws on her face. "Are you God? Am I dead?" he asked her, rolling his jaw around a few times when his words came out slurred.

"I'm not," the woman said with a little chuckle, "but I do seem to get that a lot. I'm your doctor, Irene, and you're alive and doing relatively well."

Beomgyu nodded, rolling his jaw again. "Well, that's a relief," he said, smiling a bit when the words came out clear, albeit a little scratchy.

"It is. For sure." Irene spent a few minutes writing something on her clipboard. She watched as Beomgyu slowly woke up more, his eyes flicking around the enclosed space as he started squirming, his limbs aching. "Alright. You seem more conscious than before. Do you think you can answer a few questions for me? And would you be okay with me propping your back up a bit? It might hurt, but it'd be a bit easier than just staring up at me."

"Oh, sure. To both." Beomgyu wiggled his toes experimentally, then rolled his ankles. The muscles were stiff, a sign that he probably hadn't moved in a while. The thought of making an estimate of how much time had passed nauseated him. He was in his own (new, clean) clothes, though, which told him they'd expected him to wake up sooner.

Irene smiled at him, tucking her hair behind her ear as she stood. "Great. First, can you just give me your name, age, and location?"

"You don't know that?" Beomgyu asked, raising an eyebrow while she gently tilted the bed upwards. He winced, readjusting himself until his abdomen stopped throbbing as insistently, then realized the purpose of the question. "Oh, right. Soundness of mind, and all that. Well, I'm fairly sure that I'm Choi Beomgyu, age nineteen, and... in the hospital wing of the Dragon Kingdom's palace, I assume?"

"Correct on all three," Irene said, giving him a quiet little round of applause. "Now, this one will be a bit harder, but take as long as you need. What's the last thing you remember?"

Beomgyu gazed around him at the little space that'd been exposed to him by the tilting of his seat. He was in a hospital bed, that much he knew, but the area he was in seemed to be surrounded by a large, pink curtain. He shook his head, trying to recall the memory and blinking in surprise when it came to him pretty easily.

"Well. I was sneaking around the palace with Soobin... Soobin's my attendant, you know. We were sneaking around and I heard people arguing in one of the ballrooms, and when I looked in, um... Jongin, that guy. He was hurting this girl, questioning her about something, so I went in there and kicked him in the balls and told him to screw off, I think."

He paused, furrowing his eyebrows. What had happened after that? "Anything else?" Irene prompted, and Beomgyu shook off the daze that'd suddenly hit him, nodding.

"Yeah, yeah. I think after Yuna got away... Yuna was the girl. Jongin started talking about Taehyun... er, Prince Taehyun, that is, to clarify. He called Taehyun something that really pissed me off, so I think I punched him." He frowned, trying and failing to conjure up the memory that came next. "I've got nothing after that. Sorry."

Irene had been dutifully scribbling notes on her clipboard, but she looked up when he apologized, shooting him a sympathetic look. "Don't worry, kiddo, that's more than enough. It looks like your memories are almost fully intact, minus the concussion-causing event, which is normal to lose when you're concussed."