Before I'm Gone | Stray Kids FF

Hospital

Woojin POV

It was the fourth day already and we still had no luck finding her. Two teams had gone by to the forest to look for her, they were still looking with some police. My team, which was composed of Chan, Grace and me, were looking around the city again, but a different part of it. Jeongin, Hyunjin and Hwan were searching stores in a similar area as us, though we never entered stores and would just ask people passing by if they had seen Areum. No luck. We continued through the day, asking the people around us, but nothing happened. I felt terrible. She was missing and still could not find her. Were we not trying hard enough? Was it too little of an effort? Sighing, I continued asking the people on the sidewalk. Suddenly, I noticed a commotion far off somewhere. Chan and Grace did not notice. Rather, they were absorbed in their own conversation. Tapping Chan's shoulder, I told him I wanted to check out what was going on, which he let me, not bothering to follow me. I headed towards the crowd, gently pushing my way through to see what was going on. There was a man and woman beside a fallen body, they must have been the ones to find it, and the man was calling for help on the phone. I tried to see the face, but there were too many people in front of me. All of a sudden, a few medics and a few cops appeared. They told us to step back a little so that the medics could get a stretcher in. I stayed where I was while other people dispersed, being disinterested. For me, I was quite interested, I could not help but feel like I should stay where I was to at least see the face of the fallen victim. The medics got the body on the stretcher and covered it with heated blankets. They walked past me with the stretcher and as they did, I caught a glimpse of the girl in the stretcher. Areum.

~*~

Jeongin POV

For the first time in the past while, I checked my phone. There were not many messages, everyone was too busy looking for Areum. I did have tons of notifications from things like youtube, vlive, etc. Buried at the bottom of all the notifications was a message from Woojin.

Bear-hyung
I found her, at the hospital rn.

I started to cheer, causing Hyunjin and Hwan to look at me strangely like I had lost my mind. They probably thought I was playing some game and won something and did not actually care about finding Areum. I texted Woojin for details which he gave me quite quickly. With the details on the phone, I took the hyungs by their arms and dragged them outside to go to the hospital after I texted them both the details. I told them to get Chan and Grace on the way while I ran back to the park where the forest was to get the other two teams. Once I got there, Haneul's team saw me and were seemingly confused. I had already texted them the details and they were off to the hospital. I went a little further down the path to find Seungmin's team and told them the details. All of them were delighted and they followed me towards the nearest bus stop. We're coming Areum. Don't worry.

~*~

Areum POV

"Ugh.." I squinted my eyes after opening them to bright lights. "What the heck..." I mumbled, throat hurting as I shifted in the bed. Wait. I lay still for a moment. Bed? Lights? Warmth? Where am I??? I still could not open my eyes because of the bright lights. Did I die? I moved my hand ever so slightly and felt it brush against something before I put it on my stomach. Nope, I'm alive... what's going on?

"Areum?" A warming, gentle voice was heard beside me.

I wanted to respond, but it felt as though nothing could come out of my mouth. I could not open my eyes either and left them close. Though, I did let my head turn slightly in the direction of the voice. A sigh came from the person, as though they were hoping I was awake, but I did not fulfill their hopes. Then, I remembered I could move my hand, and prior, I had brushed it against something, it must have been this person's hand. So I moved it back into the same direction where I had first felt the hand. I let my hand drop off of my body and onto the bed, letting it turn a bit until it touched the hand.

"Areum?" The voice came again, I was able to tell it was a boy. "Are you playing games with me right now?" He seemed to be slightly happy but stressed at the same time. He sighed, knowing I would not respond. My hand was resting by his, though I could not see, I could make out what position his hands were in just by what I could feel. I grabbed the hand, intertwining it with mine, trying to show that I was awake and aware, just unable to do a lot of things.

"Areum!" He exclaimed softly. "You are awake!" He held my hand gently, and started asking me yes or no questions so that I could squeeze his hand once for yes and twice for no. "Can you open your eyes?" I squeezed once. "Is something stopping you from opening your eyes?" One squeeze. "Do your eyes hurt?" I squeezed two times. "Is something blinding you?" Once. "Should I turn down the lights?" Once. He let go of my hands and I heard him walking away. I felt the lights turn off and slowly, I opened my eyes to see Woojin coming back from the light switch. There were windows that let in some light and he headed towards them to close the blinds just slightly so that we could still see, but so that it would not hurt my eyes.

He went back beside me, sitting in the chair that he had brought from who knows where. He kept asking me questions, asking me to shake or nod my head. I had not realized it, but he had gone back to holding my hand. I was not sure why, but I really did not mind it. A plus? His hands were warm while mine were freezing cold. He told me that the others would be here shortly and that the doctors would be coming to check up on me in a few minutes. The doctors did come in to check up on me, they told me that I needed to drink some tea since I was dehydrated and had a very sore throat. They explained that I had also passed out because of the cold, lack of nutrition and water, and from tiredness. I had apparently suffered from hypothermia too. They told me it was the reason my hands were still quite cold and stiff. After taking the tea they had given me, I was able to speak just a bit. I continued drinking the tea as I talked with Woojin.

"We were looking for you for ages." He said. "How did you get lost in the first place?" He intertwined his hands with mine again after I had put down my cup of tea.

"People beat me up." I said quietly. "They left me in the forest." I felt his hand squeeze mine gently. "I came to a while later and decided on going south and had been going south for a long time. I think they left me at one end of the forest and I went south instead of north. Maybe north would have been faster." My voice started to get hoarse after the long sentences.

"No, you were right to go south." He brought his other hand up, letting me put my other hand in that one to warm them up. "One, you went in our direction, two, if you went north, you would have found your way out faster, but to an empty grassland." He let go of my hands for a moment, telling me to drink the tea because my voice had gone hoarse. He went back to holding my hands and telling me stories about how worried everyone was, what they did to find me and how they had missed school and all that jazz. He asked me if I was tired. I told him I was but I did not want to sleep. He told me I should, that he would be right beside me the whole time and that I could go to sleep. Though I did not want to, I did anyways, I did need some rest after all. He adjusted the pillow for me and tucked me in. He then went back to sitting beside me, using one hand to hold the hand closest to him and the other to stroke my forehead as I fell into a deep sleep.

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This story is.... bleh

Thank you KPOP_Quren0309 for supporting me as I write this book!

Ok, so I will be posting a new story on my second account since I'm almost done writing this one, well, done writing behind the scenes, you haven't even seen the half of it heh. Anyways, stay tuned for the next one, I think it's actually decently interesting.

Also, I've started to get into GOT7 a lot! I think they're really cool. Right now, my bias is Mark (before it was Jackson and Jinyoung). I just finished watching Dream Knight... that was... fun.

Anyways, thanks for reading guys! I'll see you on Monday!