Faint, muffled noise.

Subtle yet sharp beeps, pangs against his skull which hardly feels like it's in one piece.

His eyes are glued shut by some untouchable force.

Body, immobilized by sheer exhaustion, at least from what the boy's barely conscious brain can deduce. But that's about it. There isn't much he can piece together at the moment from what scraps of strength he gathered to fight back the legion of sleep demons that seemed to him more like angels, kind, gentle angels whose only desire is to bring him a deserving rest.

Even now, those angels in his head attempt to bring him back down but some stubborn determination in Jeongguk's heart fights even harder.

Obscure voices surround him. A swirl, a hazy mess. The voices seem to get closer - he can't determine what they're saying, but they sound alarmed, in shock for some reason.

It's gradual, but the auditory haziness dissipates. He can make out a word. Just one. A name. His name.

He manages to peel his eyelids apart to the smallest degree, just enough to let light greet his vision. It's bright, an uncomfortable, painful brightness at which he squeezes his eyes shut again.

"Come on now, you're almost there, Jeongguk."

"Oh, my goodness, miracles do exist, he's conscious..."

He can hear clearly now - clear enough, that is, to process the words being said above the present fuzziness clinging to all of his senses. Jeongguk opens his eyes once more. The light still stings but he knows it's not going to sting any less if he keeps them shut.

And it's the most bizarre feeling - like he's light as a feather and as heavy as lead at the same time. Resting on these pillows, registering the people those voices belong to are doctors and nurses, he comes to the realization he's in a hospital. This bed isn't his own. These people aren't his family. This isn't home.

This isn't home.

Why isn't he home?

What am I doing here?

The gears in his brain strain to move from the rust they gathered, being hauled up in the head of a boy unaware of just how long he spent unconscious. All that Jeongguk knows is that he was unconscious. But he isn't now.

"Jeongguk, can you hear us? You're going to be alright, we're just going to need you to stay still for a little while longer. You're doing great, you're gonna be fine."

Gentle voices, kind words. But they aren't what Jeongguk wants to hear right now.

He wants confirmation. Answers. How he ended up here. What's going on. What's going on?

The boy is too physically drained and only about 10% present mentally, so in no way is he attempting to fight or argue with anyone or anything right now. He lies still. Feeling his own heart beat slow and weak, but it seems to build up in seconds to something that constrains his breathing much less. Perhaps it's the effect of whatever machine he's hooked up to - or perhaps a miracle. He doesn't know. He can't tell. But if one of the doctors thinks it was the work of a miracle, maybe even they had their doubts of the success of their own technology.

Maybe, at some point, things were hopeless.

And yet here he lies. Conscious. Alive.

The more the gears in his head begin to move, the stranger that fact seems to him. That he's not dead. That he's lying here, breathing, albeit with a bit of difficulty at the moment. But again, it seems to grow a bit easier as time passes ambiguously.

Adjusting to consciousness.

Gradually.

Jeongguk isn't sure how long he spends reclining in the same position, with the same voices coming from every which way - to his aching head's relief, they grow softer after the first initial burst of activity. The beeping of the machines, however, continues at the same volume level. He could do without those.

The stomachache, too. And the numbness running through his limbs.

"Jeongguk, can you speak?"

There's a woman standing over him. Jeongguk moves his head just enough that he can look at her without having to use his faulty peripheral vision. Wide, gentle eyes, a calming expression to match her voice. Jeongguk blinks and slowly parts his lips. He strains to let out his own voice.

His tongue won't move. Sealed to the roof of his mouth.

"If you can't yet, don't worry," the woman, presumably a doctor, says, as if sensing the boy's internal panic. "It might take some time for you to be able to move much, but in a little bit we're going to ask you to try, alright? Even just a small amount will help towards a speedier recovery. Can you make out all the words I'm saying?"

That much he's able to do. So Jeongguk gives the weakest nod. The doctor smiles warmly at him.

"Is your vision blurry at all?"

He nods weakly again.

"That'll clear. We've already given you an optical examination and there doesn't appear to be anything critically damaged about your eyes. So if there's a bit of blurriness, that's completely normal and only temporary."

Kind words. Reassuring words, but not the kind of reassurance Jeongguk is looking for right now - although, if he were honest with himself, the boy isn't entirely certain what form of reassurance he is looking for.

He exerts himself to peel his tongue from the roof of his mouth. Better success this time, even though it still feels strange and unfamiliar. He tries to speak. Words escape him. His entire vocabulary escapes him, floating around in his head but not seeming to have plans on touching base with his brain so that he can actually speak them.

A moment comes that a few words surface then drop into his mouth.

"Whath...-"

He stops himself. It didn't come out clearly like he hoped. There's a lisp. An inability for his brain to connect with his mouth in a way that he's able to properly pronounce the 's' sound. He tries again.

"Whath...going on?"

Frustration. Irritation.

"Try not to get worked up, Jeongguk," the doctor urges him softly, "we need to keep your breathing and blood pressure regulated, so just try to remain calm, alright? I can explain the situation to you later but it's nothing you need to stress about now. All you need to focus on is your own recovery, and I'm here to help you."

It's anything but pleasant. Lying on the hospital bed, feeble and helpless and in pain and still terribly, terribly confused. His sluggish train of thought isn't helping much, either. At the moment Jeongguk is more focused on taking in his surroundings and physical inabilities rather than attempting to dig into his nebulous memory bank for answers that may not even be there.

So he succumbs to his current situation.

Listening to the doctor's words, lying still as she speaks both with colleagues and with him, coaxing him into relaxing his muscles as she goes through various examinations and procedures to which Jeongguk is naive. He knows nothing of what happened to him and an equal amount of nothing about anything in the medical industry.

Another window of time slips by with Jeongguk still unaware to the concept of time. Minutes, hours...it's definitely been hours since he woke up, but how many hours is a complete mystery to him. He isn't fond of the feeling. Nor of the headache that keeps fluctuating in terms of intensity. On the bright side, Jeongguk does notice a sort of relaxation in his jaw from the time he first regained consciousness. It's less stiff now. Less achy. That, along with some other very minor improvements, help to subdue some of underlying discomfort in the boy's brain.

But that's about it. They only subdue it, not erase it. There's a persistent, bothersome knocking that Jeongguk nearly mistakes for a heartbeat, but he soon makes the connection that this is not the case.

It's his subconscious that is knocking.

Trying its best to convince him to put aside the physical aspect of his situation and finally bring attention to what it believes is of greater importance.

Memories, jumbled, hazy memories. None of them are vivid enough to replay start to end. He tries to pick out faces, names and faces at the very least, but along with his efforts comes a strong retaliation from his head.

But he tries again.

Faces, names.

His parents and Hyungi. He remembers their faces, their names.

"Where'th...my family?"

"Your parents have already been called," the doctor informs him. "They're in the waiting room along with a boy who looks to be your age. Do you know a Kim Taehyung?"

Jeongguk's heart jolts in his chest. A rush of excitement being sent to his brain, the boy makes an abrupt attempt to sit upright but his arms wobble unsteadily and cause him to slip the moment pressure is put on them.

"Jeongguk, you have to stay in bed-"

"Where'th Tae??"

"In the waiting room with your parents, Jeongguk, but we have to finish up with your examinations before you can have any visitors. Alright?"

He pants, short of breath and unwilling to comply to the doctor's orders, but after about five seconds of mental opposition, Jeongguk arrives at the depressing  realization that he isn't going to have much success trying to do much of anything but lie here. At least for now. At least till he can see them.

His family. He remembers them. Taehyung, his best friend. He remembers that much.

But the rest is a mess.

His memories of them, hazy, a mess, nothing vivid that stands out to him.

"Jeongguk, are you able to hear me still?"

The doctor's voice again. Jeongguk tears his absentminded gaze from the untouchable space in which it stuck itself. "Are...they..."

His vocabulary is still a mess, too - as though he studied the Korean language enough to understand it fluently, but finding the right words to convey his thoughts is a different story.

"They're...okay?"

"Your family is perfectly safe, none of them were involved in the accident."

"Ac-" Accident. "Ac...thi...dent..."

"Mhm."

Jeongguk shifts his gaze towards the woman's eyes, shocked to find them having acquired such a sympathetic air to them. Her kind smile returns but to a degree it seems forced now.

"Do you not remember what happened before you were unconscious?"

With fear bubbling in him, the boy shakes his head.

"You were hit by a car. It was judged to be a deliberate attempt on your life, which is why I'm saying how much of a miracle boy you must be, Jeongguk. I may be a doctor, but there's only so much modern medicine and technology can do for coma patients."

It feels like swallowing a cold stone. Nothing easy about it, it doesn't feel right in any way, and it's left to simply sit in the depths of his gut, unable to be dissolved the way food or even a tablet of medicine should.

"We may have been able to keep you alive while you were unconscious, but we can't force a coma patient back into consciousness. Your brain did that all on its own."

Miracle boy. Positive words, yet Jeongguk can't shake the uneasiness this news brings to him.

...hit by a car...

...a deliberate attempt on my life...

"How...how many...day-...th..."

"About two weeks," the doctor replies. "Given the circumstances it could potentially have lasted a lot longer, which again, is why I'm calling you a miracle. There was a time quite recent to when you woke up that it looked like you were slipping into an even deeper sleep, and at that point it may have taken months, even years for you to wake up. If at all. But that isn't the case anymore."

Her gaze softens.

"Just let yourself breathe, Jeongguk. You're going to be just fine."

He can't bring himself to accept those words. How true or misleading they may be is irrelevant to him at the moment.

Inside his head, that haziness. That mess, that swirl of thoughts that can't seem to decide whether or not they want to stick together, to become something cogent, comprehensible, something more vivid.

But something is missing.

No, a lot of somethings.

Jeongguk lies back and breathes.

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