Heartbeat || KookV

Prologue

The hospital corridor is stuffy and the air has an undertone of bleach. The walls are magnolia and are scraped in places from the hundreds of trolleys that have bumped into them. The pictures on the walls are cheap benign prints of uplifting scenes and above the double doors are large blue plastic signs with the areas of the hospital that lie ahead.

Seeing the room Taehyung is laying in is I immediately understand why people take flowers to hospital rooms. Despite our technological lives there is something in our natures that requires natural beauty as part of the healing process. We aren't robots, we aren't "units" to be fixed; Taehyung isn't here for a quick oil and filter change. In their efforts not to offend they succeed in not inspiring or lifting the spirit. I know every place is on a budget but is a cheerier shade of paint really that much more?

Taehyung was asleep he lay as still as a brick. The only movement was the slight rise and fall of his chest. It was hard to imagine that this was the same boy that tore around from sun up to sun down, terrorizing his parents and teachers alike, drawing cartoons in his brother's notebooks and salt in his Dad's coffee. In sleep he was angelic, his face as fresh as a dew drop, making gentle snuffling noises as he breathed.

There was restlessness in his head, heart and body. He couldn't be lying still for so long, he needed a reason to get up and his throat gave him that. Taehyung opened his eyes as he woke up from his slumber and again took a good look at his hand, the syringe inserted in it supplying in some liquid his body needs which he doesn't know what is. Stretching his sore body, he turned his head to examine his surroundings. His vision was still blurry, as the vague shape moving in the corner attested. Taehyung looked to the corner,

Levitating a foot off the ancient rotting floorboards the pearly-white translucent object shimmered with a hazy bright blue. Slowly it came into focus like an object looked at through a telescope, but this phantom was close, very close. At first it's whisper was like the soft susurration of the wind in the trees, then as the figure became more clear, more sharply focused, it was a boy. He looked of the same age as Taehyung, but he didn't look human like Taehyung.

Once again fear found him. It spoke to him in its cackling voice. It told his legs to go weak, his stomach to lurch and his heart to ache. Tae’s mother once told him that there was nothing to fear but fear itself, but still he could not silence its voice.

The boy looked desperate and helpless, more importantly he looked harmless. Taehyung was seeing a spirit and it looked harmless?

What made the air run out of Taehyung's lungs was, the boy didn't have a heart. The left side of his chest was just... Empty? Taehyung could see right through it. 'It must be a dream' he told himself 'It is a dream' Taehyung convinced himself and was about to go fall back asleep but the boy made a movement and Taehyung froze, his eyes widest ever been, his body numb, his head questioning everything.

The boy pointed towards taehyung, precisely his heart.

The heart is amazing, a symbol of love that beats within every person. It is there: love, life, a simple heart, a pure soul.