Oasis (A KaiSoo Fanfic)

Chapter 22 | Here

Up until now, the hospital didn't sound like such an awful place to be, right? I mean, they fed us and medicated many of us beyond our need. Hey, they even had the decency to let us go one field trips every two weeks and fill our withering minds with useless knowledge. It must really sound like the best cancer hospital in Seoul, maybe even in all of Korea, to you right now, right? Yeah, maybe on the surface it was, but that surface was artificial. It was made by advertisers and board directors so that they can cheat poor, innocent kids out of the inevitability of their premature death and overcharge their families by thousands of dollars in the process. That hospital really was hell on earth.

Well, at least it seemed like that to an 18-year-old who had gotten scolded by an adult for speaking his mind. 

Part of the reason that place seemed to hellish to me was because of their overly ridiculous form of punishment, or "reinforcement" as they termed it, for "unacceptable behavior": 24-hour solitary confinement (or 48 if you endanger someone else's life and talk disrespectfully to a doctor). Basically, they stuck you in a room all by yourself for an entire day so that you could think about what you did wrong and how you can improve for next time. Yep, exactly what the title suggests. It was stupid, really, sticking someone in a room for a day because they misbehaved. What did that do? Teach them that every time they fucked up they would be alone? Maybe in certain cases that's a realistic consequence, but in a case where you just rebel a little and talkback...not really.

Luckily for me, one of the two days of my punishment period was parent's day. I didn't even want to think about how I'd explain that one to my parents when they saw me. The door to the confinement room opened and I looked up from my sitting spot on the ground against the wall, seeing Ms. Choi walk in with them. You'd think after the first day she'd get over what I did and stop shaming me with that look in her eyes. But she didn't.

"Jongin," my mom said, practically running over to me as I lifted myself onto my feet. "Honey, what happened?"

"Nothing really," I said with a shrug, letting her hands surround my face from either side for a moment. "I just took Kyungsoo onto the roof for a while and next thing I know I'm being locked in here for two days."

"Is this true?" she asked, spinning her head around toward Ms. Choi.

"Not completely, no," she said. "He did take Kyungsoo onto the roof, but it was an unauthorized move and afterward when we asked him why he did it, he was very rude to Kyungsoo's doctors." I scowled and rolled my eyes as my mom looked at me again, this time with no sign of sympathy in her eyes. "The talking back would have been handled with a mere warning, but since someone life was potentially on the line, we had to take it a step further."

"Sweetie," my mom said, a few tears twinkling in her eyes. "Why would you try to hurt someone?"

"I didn't try to hurt anyone, mom," I said, actually feeling insulted. Sure, I hated the human race, but not enough to physically harm anyone from it. "Kyungsoo wanted to go up there. He asked me to take him and I said yes. Everyone is just overreacting."

"You had no idea why he wanted to go up there, Jongin," Ms. Choi interjected sternly, "and yet you still said yes. He could have wanted to go up there to commit suicide."

"Really?" I said, eyebrows raised in disbelief and heart racing in anger. "Kyungsoo tricking me into taking him to his death? You've got to be kidding me. He'd never even cut in front of me, let alone go for all-out suicide."

"He cuts?" she asked, both her and my parents looking surprised.

"I meant if he did," I said. "Don't worry, he doesn't cut. Only I do." Silence fell over us like a brick to the head.