Sehun my husband

Chapter 12

Chapter 12

(Y/N)'s POV

The day they told me I could leave the hospital did not feel like freedom.

For so long, I had imagined discharge as something close to relief, something bright enough to cut through all the heaviness that had settled into me over the past few weeks. I imagined fresh air, a bed that belonged to me, walls that did not smell faintly of antiseptic and loss. I imagined stepping out of the hospital and feeling lighter, as if leaving that room meant leaving some part of the pain behind as well. But when the nurse stood at the end of my bed with a careful smile and a clipboard pressed against her chest, telling me that I would be discharged later that afternoon, relief never came. There was no lightness, no sense of release, no quiet joy at finally going home. There was only a strange stillness inside me, a heaviness that settled even deeper, as though my body already understood something my mind had not yet dared to admit.

The doctor explained everything slowly, carefully, speaking with the kind of gentleness people used when they knew their words mattered. I needed rest. I needed proper meals. I needed someone with me. He repeated that part more than once. I was not to be left alone for the next few days, not with the fainting spell, not with the recurring headaches, not with the way my body had been weakening little by little without warning. If the dizziness returned, if my vision blurred again, if the pain in my head worsened, someone was to call for help immediately. I listened. I nodded. I understood every word he said. But the exhaustion inside me made everything feel far away, as if I were hearing instructions meant for someone else while I sat quietly inside a body that no longer felt entirely reliable.

By the time the paperwork was done, the light outside had begun to soften into evening. Pale gold stretched across the hospital floor in long, thin reflections, and everything around me looked too normal for the weight I was carrying. Nurses still passed in measured steps. Distant voices still rose and fell. Doors still opened and closed. Life continued around me in smooth, practiced motions, untouched by what had happened in the spaces between them.

And then there was him.

Sehun had been discharged too.

Seeing him standing there in his own clothes instead of a hospital gown should have felt familiar, almost comforting. It should have reminded me of life before all of this—before the coma, before the forgetting, before the quiet ache of watching someone look at me like I was standing on the wrong side of my own life. But nothing about it felt comforting. He looked stronger physically, more stable, more like himself in all the obvious ways. Yet when his eyes met mine, there was still that same incomplete hesitation in them, that same unresolved distance. He no longer looked at me with open coldness, and somehow that made things worse. Coldness could be understood. It could be defended against. But uncertainty left room for hope, and hope had become the cruelest thing of all.

Taeyeon stood beside him.

Not too close in a way anyone could call inappropriate, not in a way dramatic enough to be questioned, but close enough that the space already seemed chosen. She adjusted the strap of her bag and glanced at him first before letting her attention drift toward me. There was calmness in her expression, the same calmness she always wore when she wanted to appear reasonable, like someone too collected to be doubted.

"Are you ready?" she asked him softly.

He nodded, but his eyes came back to me almost immediately after.

The doctor's warning still echoed in my mind.

Do not stay alone.

It was because of that—because those words were still so clear—that I forced myself to speak.