attention | gyuricky

twenty-two.

one year ago.

Ricky wakes up to nineteen missed calls in the morning. It's twenty minutes past seven and he squints at his phone trying to figure out who in the world has been calling him in the middle of the night, between brushing his teeth and attempting to button up his uniform shirt with one hand.

Ten missed calls in succession from Zhanghao just eight minutes ago, three missed calls from Seungeon fourteen minutes ago, five missed calls from an unknown number an hour ago, and further down, buried beneath some message notifications from groupchats and social media pings, one missed call from Yujin. Five hours ago, just after 2am.

Ricky calls Yujin back first. It's the most unexpected out of the nineteen; Yujin is the one who keeps the best sleep schedule out of all of them, and he's rarely awake past one in the morning if he can help it. Yujin doesn't pick up, and Ricky hangs up when the call goes to voicemail. Maybe he's still asleep.

"Hey, sorry I was asleep. What's up?" He hits send on the message and calls Zhanghao as he's rummaging through the neat stack of notes on his table for the one he knows he'll need for today's classes. The line's busy the first time he calls but it connects on the second try, and Ricky's momentarily taken aback by how agitated Zhanghao sounds on the other end of the line.

"Ricky, come to the hospital now. You know where it is, right? Get here right now!"

"What? School starts in half an hour. What's going on?"

"Fuck school, seriously. Come as soon as you can."

"Can you tell me what's going on first?"

"Yujin was in a car accident last night, okay? They don't think he'll make it. Get here now, before it's too late."

His driver is visibly confused when Ricky scrambles out of the house without his bookbag and telling him to take them to the hospital, now, and to please hurry, but to his credit he doesn't waste any time, taking them on the shortest available route to the city hospital. It takes a little longer than expected, considering they're in the thick of the seven o'clock rush hour, and Ricky spends every waiting minute nervously playing with his fingers and checking his phone for any new updates, his hands cold enough he gets chills when he wraps his arms around himself to stop himself from shaking so much.

He gets out of the car at the front entrance and calls Zhanghao immediately.

"Hao, I'm here. Where's Yujin?"

"We're waiting outside one of the operating theatres, follow the signs and come quickly."

It's a hospital and Ricky's mindful not to bump into anyone, but it takes everything in him not to flat out sprint for his life. Corridors fly past him; trauma bay, pediatric centre, intensive care, and he almost misses the hallway marked "Operating Room 1-8", just catching himself on the corner as the rubber soles of his shoes skid to a stop on the polished floor. He can see them down the hall, Zhanghao with his arm around Ollie in one of the plastic benches, next to an older man sitting down and a woman pacing. She seems to recognise Ricky as he approaches, patting Zhanghao on the shoulder to get him to look up.

"I came here as fast as I could," Ricky says, panting a little from the sudden exertion of running. "How is he? What happened?"

"There was a car accident last night at around two in the morning, two blocks away from Yujin's house," Zhanghao answers, pulling at Ricky's shirt to get him to sit down next to him and Ollie. The plastic chair is uncomfortably hard and Ricky's so anxious he'd really rather stand, but he doesn't shake Zhanghao's hand away. "They think Yujin was run over by something, a car or a truck."

"I don't know what he was doing out on the street in the middle of the night," Yujin's mother continues, still pacing up and down. "No one found him until almost six in the morning. He was unconscious by the side of the road for almost four hours..."

"The doctors didn't tell us much, but they said he was lucky his head wasn't badly hurt," Zhanghao continues. "His lower body bore the brunt of it. They'll have to amputate the lower portion of his legs. They say there's a very slim chance he'll make it, but even if he survives, he'll never be able to walk again."

Yujin's call...had it been a call for help?

Ricky stands, and it's like he's moving through water; he's dizzy and he feels like he's going to throw up, but he manages to push Zhanghao's hand away and mumbles something about excusing himself before stumbling down to the end of the corridor and taking off running. He runs until he's out of breath and sinks down against a wall, at a different part of the hospital he doesn't recognise, far enough away he can't get his bearings, shaking and panting so hard he feels his chest burning like fire.

Yujin had called for Ricky to save him, after the accident, perhaps with his last few seconds of consciousness. And Ricky had left his best friend to die.

He collapses onto the floor with his head in his hands as the force of his sobs overtakes him, and the world goes quiet.