Paper Plane [Hunhan]

You

AN: I’ll be honest, I had trouble with this chapter. I knew where I wanted to go and what I wanted to happen, but getting there took so many tries it was almost pitiful. But at long last it’s here.

This chapter takes a slightly different format to the others? I think it does anyway.

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Paper planes lined the walls of the white hospital room. Though they failed to give colour to the mediocre room, the lines and scribbles of words told a story along the giant canvas. Luhan’s mother looked over the pieces without reading a word, her expression unreadable, hand lightly brushing the odd paper every so often as she weaved between the life support machines that Luhan could no longer live without.

Luhan watched her quietly. Taeyeon said it was fine to decorate the walls as long as it would be something easy to remove, and Sehun had helped string the paper to the ceilings and blue-tack them to the walls. Now Luhan was surrounded by planes. His empty sky had been filled. He had wished that he could paint the walls blue – like the cloudless skies that he had stood under the best few months with Sehun. Even in the coldest months, Luhan could not remember a time when he felt the harsh winds of winter. But Taeyeon wouldn’t allow it. The walls had to stay white.

“It’s…different.” The old woman spoke as she once more soothed out the wrinkles in her clothes. She stood and stared at one of the planes, back turned to the young man so that he could not see her expression. The words, though scribbled and messy, were  as clear as day. Though to her, ‘I can’t. I don’t know how’ meant nothing more than being unable to do something.

Luhan forgot himself for a moment, trying to get out of the bed though for the past week he had been forbidden from doing do. Taeyeon shook her head – her expression bleak. Luhan knew, he couldn’t do the things he had been able to do only a month ago – his body could no longer support itself. He was just an empty shell waiting for the end.

“Doctor. Kim, are you sure this is okay? Won’t you have to take all these down when…” Her eyes widened at the realisation of what was about to slip from her mouth, but Luhan had no reaction when she looked at him in shock. He knew. He was ready.

“It’s okay, Sehun offered to help when the time came.” Taeyeon nodded, moving around the bed and lightly hitting one of the planes that hung from the ceiling. It had been a hard job, but one that she didn’t mind helping Sehun with. Luhan had been devastated when he was told he could no longer leave the hospital as often as he did, and she never did like seeing her patience sad. “He’ll take them with him I assume; a reminder of their friendship.”

“I wouldn’t trust them with anyone else.” The man muttered, his head low. “They wouldn’t understand them anyway. They’d just look like one way conversations to anyone else.”

Without warning the door opened, and the people inside looked over just in time to see a tall boy with bleached blonde hair enter. He stood still when he noticed the unknown woman standing with his friend, but Sehun didn’t speak. He couldn’t, and instead bowed his head in greeting before handing a plastic bag full of sugary snacks towards the bedridden man.

“Sehun I told you to stop buying him those things.” Taeyeon whined as she hit his arm, but didn’t take the bag away from Luhan.

Sehun simply shrugged, and Luhan smiled brightly – momentarily forgetting that his mother was in the room as he pulled out a bar of chocolate and began eating it like a child would. The woman cleared her throat and wrapped a piece of natural black hair around her finger, suddenly feeling out of place. She stuck her hand out towards the new member of the room and spoke as though expecting a response. “I’m Luhan’s mother, you are?”