The Scattered Stars Effect part five
Pairing: HimUp
Rated: PG13
Length: 3.5K
song
part four
Himchan didn’t realize at first that something was wrong. He normally heard his daughter playing in her bedroom so he never checked on her since she was busy. But after his mother had stopped telling him how much of a failure he was to his daughter for not providing a woman’s influence he realized he hadn’t heard Hayoung in a while. Too long of a while. She was loud and giggly and made her presence known in every possible way.
“Are you asleep?” He knocked gently on her bedroom door. “Sweetheart?” The room was cold when he pushed the door open. Freezing cold. He looked around in confusion because the obviousness was too much to comprehend, his daughter couldn’t possibly be anywhere else, she just couldn’t. “Hayoung!”
His mother heard the terrified shout and rushed in behind him. “Oh my g- Himchan, the window’s open!”
They hurried to the cracked window but they were too late because she had slipped through it almost twenty minutes before.
“Hayoung!”
---
The frantic phone call Jongup received took him almost two minutes to comprehend. All he could hear was Himchan screaming at him through the line and the words ‘Hayoung’ and ‘police’ floated in and out of his brain never connecting until Himchan lost control and started sobbing hysterically into his ear.
“I’m on my way.” He was already at the door, keys tightly encased in his fist.
“No! No, no, no, stay home!” Himchan’s voice wavered in his ear. “She knows the way there.” He broke off into tears again, hoarsely mumbling words that Jongup couldn’t understand before the phone disconnected.
Jongup had experience in life or death situations and he knew you were supposed to stay calm, breathe, and think things through before you acted.
But in his entire life nothing he had gone through was like this. Running for his life couldn’t compare to knowing Hayoung was somewhere out there alone in the city. She was probably cold and terrified and here he sat in his warm apartment, not able to do anything to help.
“Please,” He dropped to his knees and raised his hands to his chin, eyes closed and prayers he hadn’t used in years pouring out of his mouth. “Please bring my baby home.”
What felt like hours passed with Jongup still in the middle of his kitchen floor, his mind miles away and lips chanting rhythmically the promises that he would fulfill and the things he would change if Hayoung came home safe. The sound of his phone had him scrambling to his feet, slipping on the linoleum and banging his elbow against the table, but he didn’t notice as he clumsily pushed the connect button six times.
“Himchan?”
Himchan was calmer now, but it was a robotically quiet calm that hid just how terrified he really was. “No news. You?”
Jongup slumped back to the floor in defeat. Their apartments weren’t a close walk apart but Hayoung should have been able to make it by now. If she wasn’t heading towards his home they were all at a loss at where she would go.
He covered his mouth so that Himchan couldn’t hear the first strangled wail he had made since he had first heard the news forty-five minutes earlier. “No.” He managed to compose himself enough to answer but immediately went back to hiding his broken cries.
“I need you here, I need you with me.” Himchan’s voice cracked and Jongup realized he had been so quiet because his already gravely tone was exhausted. Whatever he had been screaming earlier had caused him to go almost silent. “Come home?”
“Okay.” As he dragged himself back to his feet a scratching at his door jerked his attention away from Himchan’s deep breaths in his ear. The sound came again, softer this time, and Jongup wanted to move but he couldn’t, his feet were frozen to the floor. He couldn’t let his hopes up, it was probably a rat that smelled the spoiled sauce he had forgotten about on the stove. His apartment building was full of the greedy vermin and scratching was nothing new. But maybe, just maybe his prayers had worked for once.
Himchan took a deep breath over the line, not knowing that Jongup’s silence was because he was slowly edging towards the door. His feet took tiny steps until a weak knock clanked once against the very bottom of the frame and after that he took a giant leap forward, yanking the door open and whimpering Hayoung’s name.
“Jongup!”
He didn’t hear Himchan’s shout because the phone was long forgotten and in the floor as he gathered Hayoung’s fragile body into his arms with a loud moan of sorrow. Her tights were torn and flecked with blood and mud, the bows he had carefully tied on the tips of her pigtails just this morning were gone and her braids were slick with melted snow.
“Oh sweetheart…”
Her head rolled in his arms, but she was alert enough to mouth his name through blue-tinged lips. As Jongup climbed back up he tried to do it carefully so that he wouldn’t move her more than was necessary but he knew he had to hurry because she wasn’t trembling in his arms, her tiny body was barely moving, and that meant she was far past cold and verging in on hypothermia.
“Jongup! Jongup, please, what happened?” Himchan’s rasp was louder now as he used every last ounce of his hoarse voice to scream into the discarded phone.
“I have her.” Hayoung was so small that he was able to hold her with one arm and use the other to grab his coat off the back of the door. The phone was lodged between his shoulder and his neck but he didn’t even care if it fell as he ran towards the stairs. Himchan knew enough now to get to the hospital. “She’s here, I have her.”
Himchan started weeping again. “Is she alive? Is she breathing? Please keep her alive, Jongup, pl-”
“We’re going to the hospital on Fourth Street. Meet us there.” The coat he had grabbed was tightly tucked around Hayoung after he ran into the street to hail an oncoming cab. He kissed her closed eyelids and red cheeks and lowered his lips to whisper a song into her ear as the cab sped away.
“In a small white boat, in the blue sky, are a cinnamon tree and a rabbit.”
---
Himchan had fallen asleep ages ago, his head tucked safely against Jongup’s shoulder and his hand slowly unclenching around Jongup’s fingers as he finally relaxed in his much needed sleep. It was close to six in the morning and they had been kept out of Hayoung’s room ever since Jongup had grabbed the doctor’s coat and threatened that he would rip him apart with his bare hands if she wasn’t okay.
“You want a coffee?” Himchan’s mother stood up from her chair across the waiting room and stretched, her back cracking painfully loud. “I think I’m going to need at least three.”
He shook his head and smiled faintly in thanks. “I want to stay with Himchan.” The man asleep next to him twitched his fingers in the throes of a nightmare.
She looked at her son and Jongup watched a lifetime of emotions pass across her face. “If I ask you a personal question will you answer it honestly?” At Jongup’s wide-eyed response she sighed. “Will you answer if I tell you why Hayoung left and went to find you specifically?”
“O-Okay?”
“I told Himchan it was time to start dating again.” Jongup closed his fingers tighter around Himchan’s but tried hard to keep his face nonchalant. “And Hayoung heard us.”
Jongup knew Hayoung wanted him with them every second of every day and a new girlfriend for her daddy would change all of that. It made perfect sense to him that she would seek him out in her panic.
“What did Himchan say?” He could smell Himchan’s shampoo from where his black hair tickled Jongup’s cheek. The starch from his button-up shirt scratched Jongup’s bare arms but it was an uncomfortable feeling he would take any day. Right now he had almost everything he needed to be happy. Almost. “About dating someone new? Was he okay with it?”
Her sigh was pained. “He looked about as happy about it as you do.” With a final timid smile in his direction she turned towards the hallway.
“What did you want to ask me?” His question stopped her in her tracks. “I told you I’d answer.”
“You already told me everything I needed to know.”
---
When Hayoung woke up it didn’t make the universe stop in its tracks, it wasn’t broadcasted through the hospital for everyone to hear, but it felt like it to Himchan when the doctor stepped through the waiting room door with a smile on his face.
“She’s asking for her daddy.” The news made Himchan erupt into fresh tears that he knew he had to get out of his system because his daughter didn’t need to see him cry and know that he was worried all night about her. “She’s a lucky little girl. Another thirty minutes out in that snow and she could have lost a finger or two. Her breaths are still a little rattled so I’m not going to rule out pneumonia just yet but we’ll cross that bridge if we come to it.”
Himchan let Jongup pull him to his feet and wipe his wet cheeks. “Hayoung will feel horrible if she sees you crying like this.”
He nodded through a gulp and tried to stop the tears from pouring out of his eyes like rain. “She’s alive.” Jongup grinned as Himchan held tightly to his shirt and pulled him closer because if he concentrated on the smell of his skin and the puffs of air hitting his jaw then he could push the rest of his outburst away. “Hayoung’s okay, Jongup. Hayoung’s alive.”
“I know, I know, now go in and look at her. Stroke her cheeks and kiss her palms and tell her you love her.”
The doctor was waiting by the door, ready to lead Himchan down the hallway to the intensive care unit where his daughter was waiting for him. Before Himchan could take one step out the door he turned to Jongup in confusion. “Aren’t you coming?”
“I’m sorry but it’s immediate family only in intensive care.” The doctor jumped in apologetically.
Himchan frowned, his eyes still on Jongup. “But Jongup is her family. If you don’t let him back you will hear her tantrum from here, trust me.”
The doctor sighed and waved Jongup forward. “Just don’t get her too over-stimulated right now. Two visitors is a lot for her to handle until she regains some strength. Talk softly and gently and whatever you do, please don’t try to punish her for what she did. She’s too weak for that right now.”
“I wasn’t going to punish her anyways.” Himchan reached towards Jongup’s hand as they walked, their fingers sliding against each other’s naturally by this point. “All she wanted was Jongup. I can’t fault her for that.” They stopped in front of a cracked door, Room 56 it proclaimed in tiny black letters. “Are you ready?”
Jongup squeezed his fingers and nudged Himchan forward. “Let’s go. I want to see our girl.”
The joy at seeing Hayoung breathing normally and reaching her tiny hands towards them was better than any beautiful painting Jongup had ever viewed. As soon as she saw them enter her eyes lit up and a grin spread across her face that showed off the new missing tooth that she had been so excited about two weeks earlier.
“Daddy!” Himchan had to be nudged towards her and Jongup was slightly worried that he would fall apart again but he managed to hold it together as he grasped her hand inside his own larger one and kissed her fingertips one by one. “When can we go home?”
Himchan was still silent, his eyes closed and body trembling, so Jongup jumped in for him. “You have to stay until the doctor says you can leave.” He smoothed the loose hair off her face with a smile. “Your hair is going to be so hard to brush that you’ll probably hate me afterwards.”
She wrinkled her nose, the perfect button nose that Jongup loved to rub his own against and make her giggle. “But you’ll do it nicely right? You always go slow when it hurts.”
Jongup would brush it one strand at a time if that was what she needed. “Of course I will, sweetheart.” He rested his hands on Himchan’s shoulders and rubbed a thumb across the nape of his neck in comfort. “Are you feeling okay? Do you want me or daddy to get you anything?”
With her father still trying to compose himself, Hayoung bit her lip and hid her face behind her hair. “I want my dolly.” She murmured shyly. “The one you got me for Valentine’s Day with the pink dress.”
“I’ll go and get it as soon as I leave here, okay? I promise.” Jongup took another step closer to Himchan and let him relax against his chest, his lips skimming across the lobe of his ear. “Talk to her, Himchan. She loves you.”
Himchan took a deep breath and opened his eyes to see his daughter looking worriedly at him, sheet being twisted tightly in her fists.
“Hi Princess.” He carefully touched the entrance to the IV on the top of her hand. “Daddy missed you.”
Hayoung looked at him for a moment and then turned her head away. “You wouldn’t even care if I was gone. Your new girlfriend is more important than me.”
With a relieved laugh, Himchan pulled the chair next to the bed closer and sat beside her, reaching for her hand again. “The only girl in my life is you and that’s not changing any time soon. We don’t have to talk about all of that right now though. Just know that Jongup isn’t going anywhere and you don’t ever have to worry about losing him, okay?”
Jongup’s heart tried its hardest to flutter at the news that Himchan considered his presence in their life a permanent thing, but deep down he knew that at any moment everything he had built here could come crashing down on top of him.
---
“You’re giving her the one that makes her sleepy. It’s ten in the morning, Himchan. She doesn’t need that.”
“But she barely slept last night and she’s exhausted.”
“Then let her fall asleep naturally. She doesn’t need to pass out for ten hours and wake up a zombie when it’s her normal bedtime.” Jongup sighed and grabbed him by the hips to move him away from the counter. “I put her daytime cough syrup in the bathroom. Go get it while I hide this one so you’re not tempted to knock your daughter unconscious.”
Himchan looked close to collapsing himself, the dark circles under his eyes making his already pale skin look even more ghostly. “I don’t like listening to her cough all night. I just want her to get some rest.”
Jongup turned around and pulled Himchan into his chest. His smaller body staggered under the heavier weight as Himchan fell into him, arms encircling him painfully tight and jaw digging into his collarbone. “Let me give her the medicine and get her settled. You go take a shower because you haven’t had one in like a month.”
“It’s been a day and a half.” Himchan corrected childishly, his fingertips poking into the softness of Jongup’s lower back. “And what kind of father would I be if I abandoned my daughter six days after she almost died and two days before her birthday?”
“One that knows she’s being taken care of.” He stroked his fingers through Himchan’s greasy hair and smiled against his temple. “Don’t you trust me?”
A hmm was his answer until the giant yawn Himchan was making ended. “More than anyone.” He clarified. His body drooped a tiny bit more as his eyes started to drift closed. “Sometimes I think she loves you more than me.”
He doubted that. He and Hayoung were best friends and being away from her for more than a few hours made him ache, but he had to keep telling himself that at the end of the day he wasn’t her father. They could never have what she had with Himchan.
“Of course she doesn’t.” Jongup tugged his hair making Himchan whine against his throat. “Go on. I’ve got this.”
He waited until Himchan had reluctantly dragged his feet towards the bedroom before he grabbed the daytime cough syrup Hayoung needed. The sound of the TV Jongup had bought her was muffled through the closed door but he could hear the opening notes to her favorite movie. “Hey little girl. How you doing?”
She pouted and lifted her arms towards him. “I want to go outside. Why can’t we play at the park?”
“Because it’s cold outside and you’re sick.” Her lips curled in disgust when he lifted the bottle of medicine up. “Don’t give me that look. You know you need it. Your daddy said you hardly slept because you coughed all night.”
“My throat hurts.”
Jongup made sure he poured the correct amount into the dosage cup and held it out to her. “And whose fault is it that you’re sick?”
Hayoung crossed her arms and turned her face away. “Uh-uh.”
“Maybe you should have thought about this before you ran away in the snow all by yourself.” Over the last few days they had tried numerous times to talk to her about what had happened but she stubbornly stayed tight-lipped and glared at them. “Let’s make a deal. You take your medicine and I will read you three books.”
That caught her attention. “Five.”
“Four.” He offered, knowing she would take the offer. When she came back from her bookcase a few minutes later with the four longest books she had he realized that maybe he had been outsmarted. “You’re lucky I like you.”
Hayoung grinned cheekily and patted the bed next to her. “Do the funny voices Papa.”
---
A gentle shaking on his arm drew him awake and he blinked sleepily up at an amused Himchan. His hair was brushed and dry and the tiredness under his eyes was still there but wasn’t as prominent as it was when he last saw him.
“Hey.” Jongup croaked out, stretching his free arm over his head. “What time is it?”
“Four.” Himchan helped him lift Hayoung off his chest and settle her back into her bed. “I guess we all needed a nap. Come have lunch with me.”
He rubbed his eyes and yawned. “It’s almost dinner time, Himchan.”
Himchan turned back to him with a grin. “Yeah but if we wait for dinner then we skipped a meal and that’s not healthy, Jongup. You would think you would know better than that.”
He rolled his eyes at Himchan’s twisted way of getting to eat twice in one evening but went along with it because not only was Himchan’s energy back (something Jongup had been worried about for days) but his stomach was rumbling something fierce inside of him.
“You didn’t fix this did you?” He eyed the plates piled high with food, more food than either of them had eaten in the last week. Three types of noodles, a mound of rice, barbequed strips of meat and even an over-sized bowl of sautéed vegetables were placed on each placemat. “This is enough carbs to kill a horse.”
“I ordered it and waited until I got it all together to wake you up.” Himchan pointed behind him to the coffee table. “I folded all the laundry while I waited. There were three baskets of it. We’ve really let this place fall behind.”
Jongup waited until he had shoved a mouthful of the meat into his mouth, eyes closing and a soft moan coming out from the amazing flavor. They had survived on boxed noodles and frozen pizza for the last few days and before that it was bland hospital food. This was almost exotic for him. “We had a lot of other things to concentrate on.” He picked the few onions that he could find out of his vegetable bowl and dropped them into Himchan’s. “She coughed a lot while I read to her but I don’t think it was as much as yesterday. The doctor said it would probably be a few more days before she pulled out of it so hopefully tomorrow will be even better.”
Himchan prodded into his own plate, the chopsticks moving things around but nothing ever actually making it into his mouth. He finally looked up and stared straight into Jongup’s eyes. “I haven’t thanked you yet. For taking care of her. For taking care of us.” He dropped his eyes again and chewed the corner of his cheek in embarrassment. “I wouldn’t have been able to do this by myself. So… Thank you.”
He wanted to tell him that thank you’s weren’t necessary. That he would bring down every star in the sky if that was what he was asked for. But he hoped Himchan already knew that.
“You’re welcome.”
part six
Rated: PG13
Length: 3.5K
song
part four
Himchan didn’t realize at first that something was wrong. He normally heard his daughter playing in her bedroom so he never checked on her since she was busy. But after his mother had stopped telling him how much of a failure he was to his daughter for not providing a woman’s influence he realized he hadn’t heard Hayoung in a while. Too long of a while. She was loud and giggly and made her presence known in every possible way.
“Are you asleep?” He knocked gently on her bedroom door. “Sweetheart?” The room was cold when he pushed the door open. Freezing cold. He looked around in confusion because the obviousness was too much to comprehend, his daughter couldn’t possibly be anywhere else, she just couldn’t. “Hayoung!”
His mother heard the terrified shout and rushed in behind him. “Oh my g- Himchan, the window’s open!”
They hurried to the cracked window but they were too late because she had slipped through it almost twenty minutes before.
“Hayoung!”
---
The frantic phone call Jongup received took him almost two minutes to comprehend. All he could hear was Himchan screaming at him through the line and the words ‘Hayoung’ and ‘police’ floated in and out of his brain never connecting until Himchan lost control and started sobbing hysterically into his ear.
“I’m on my way.” He was already at the door, keys tightly encased in his fist.
“No! No, no, no, stay home!” Himchan’s voice wavered in his ear. “She knows the way there.” He broke off into tears again, hoarsely mumbling words that Jongup couldn’t understand before the phone disconnected.
Jongup had experience in life or death situations and he knew you were supposed to stay calm, breathe, and think things through before you acted.
But in his entire life nothing he had gone through was like this. Running for his life couldn’t compare to knowing Hayoung was somewhere out there alone in the city. She was probably cold and terrified and here he sat in his warm apartment, not able to do anything to help.
“Please,” He dropped to his knees and raised his hands to his chin, eyes closed and prayers he hadn’t used in years pouring out of his mouth. “Please bring my baby home.”
What felt like hours passed with Jongup still in the middle of his kitchen floor, his mind miles away and lips chanting rhythmically the promises that he would fulfill and the things he would change if Hayoung came home safe. The sound of his phone had him scrambling to his feet, slipping on the linoleum and banging his elbow against the table, but he didn’t notice as he clumsily pushed the connect button six times.
“Himchan?”
Himchan was calmer now, but it was a robotically quiet calm that hid just how terrified he really was. “No news. You?”
Jongup slumped back to the floor in defeat. Their apartments weren’t a close walk apart but Hayoung should have been able to make it by now. If she wasn’t heading towards his home they were all at a loss at where she would go.
He covered his mouth so that Himchan couldn’t hear the first strangled wail he had made since he had first heard the news forty-five minutes earlier. “No.” He managed to compose himself enough to answer but immediately went back to hiding his broken cries.
“I need you here, I need you with me.” Himchan’s voice cracked and Jongup realized he had been so quiet because his already gravely tone was exhausted. Whatever he had been screaming earlier had caused him to go almost silent. “Come home?”
“Okay.” As he dragged himself back to his feet a scratching at his door jerked his attention away from Himchan’s deep breaths in his ear. The sound came again, softer this time, and Jongup wanted to move but he couldn’t, his feet were frozen to the floor. He couldn’t let his hopes up, it was probably a rat that smelled the spoiled sauce he had forgotten about on the stove. His apartment building was full of the greedy vermin and scratching was nothing new. But maybe, just maybe his prayers had worked for once.
Himchan took a deep breath over the line, not knowing that Jongup’s silence was because he was slowly edging towards the door. His feet took tiny steps until a weak knock clanked once against the very bottom of the frame and after that he took a giant leap forward, yanking the door open and whimpering Hayoung’s name.
“Jongup!”
He didn’t hear Himchan’s shout because the phone was long forgotten and in the floor as he gathered Hayoung’s fragile body into his arms with a loud moan of sorrow. Her tights were torn and flecked with blood and mud, the bows he had carefully tied on the tips of her pigtails just this morning were gone and her braids were slick with melted snow.
“Oh sweetheart…”
Her head rolled in his arms, but she was alert enough to mouth his name through blue-tinged lips. As Jongup climbed back up he tried to do it carefully so that he wouldn’t move her more than was necessary but he knew he had to hurry because she wasn’t trembling in his arms, her tiny body was barely moving, and that meant she was far past cold and verging in on hypothermia.
“Jongup! Jongup, please, what happened?” Himchan’s rasp was louder now as he used every last ounce of his hoarse voice to scream into the discarded phone.
“I have her.” Hayoung was so small that he was able to hold her with one arm and use the other to grab his coat off the back of the door. The phone was lodged between his shoulder and his neck but he didn’t even care if it fell as he ran towards the stairs. Himchan knew enough now to get to the hospital. “She’s here, I have her.”
Himchan started weeping again. “Is she alive? Is she breathing? Please keep her alive, Jongup, pl-”
“We’re going to the hospital on Fourth Street. Meet us there.” The coat he had grabbed was tightly tucked around Hayoung after he ran into the street to hail an oncoming cab. He kissed her closed eyelids and red cheeks and lowered his lips to whisper a song into her ear as the cab sped away.
“In a small white boat, in the blue sky, are a cinnamon tree and a rabbit.”
---
Himchan had fallen asleep ages ago, his head tucked safely against Jongup’s shoulder and his hand slowly unclenching around Jongup’s fingers as he finally relaxed in his much needed sleep. It was close to six in the morning and they had been kept out of Hayoung’s room ever since Jongup had grabbed the doctor’s coat and threatened that he would rip him apart with his bare hands if she wasn’t okay.
“You want a coffee?” Himchan’s mother stood up from her chair across the waiting room and stretched, her back cracking painfully loud. “I think I’m going to need at least three.”
He shook his head and smiled faintly in thanks. “I want to stay with Himchan.” The man asleep next to him twitched his fingers in the throes of a nightmare.
She looked at her son and Jongup watched a lifetime of emotions pass across her face. “If I ask you a personal question will you answer it honestly?” At Jongup’s wide-eyed response she sighed. “Will you answer if I tell you why Hayoung left and went to find you specifically?”
“O-Okay?”
“I told Himchan it was time to start dating again.” Jongup closed his fingers tighter around Himchan’s but tried hard to keep his face nonchalant. “And Hayoung heard us.”
Jongup knew Hayoung wanted him with them every second of every day and a new girlfriend for her daddy would change all of that. It made perfect sense to him that she would seek him out in her panic.
“What did Himchan say?” He could smell Himchan’s shampoo from where his black hair tickled Jongup’s cheek. The starch from his button-up shirt scratched Jongup’s bare arms but it was an uncomfortable feeling he would take any day. Right now he had almost everything he needed to be happy. Almost. “About dating someone new? Was he okay with it?”
Her sigh was pained. “He looked about as happy about it as you do.” With a final timid smile in his direction she turned towards the hallway.
“What did you want to ask me?” His question stopped her in her tracks. “I told you I’d answer.”
“You already told me everything I needed to know.”
---
When Hayoung woke up it didn’t make the universe stop in its tracks, it wasn’t broadcasted through the hospital for everyone to hear, but it felt like it to Himchan when the doctor stepped through the waiting room door with a smile on his face.
“She’s asking for her daddy.” The news made Himchan erupt into fresh tears that he knew he had to get out of his system because his daughter didn’t need to see him cry and know that he was worried all night about her. “She’s a lucky little girl. Another thirty minutes out in that snow and she could have lost a finger or two. Her breaths are still a little rattled so I’m not going to rule out pneumonia just yet but we’ll cross that bridge if we come to it.”
Himchan let Jongup pull him to his feet and wipe his wet cheeks. “Hayoung will feel horrible if she sees you crying like this.”
He nodded through a gulp and tried to stop the tears from pouring out of his eyes like rain. “She’s alive.” Jongup grinned as Himchan held tightly to his shirt and pulled him closer because if he concentrated on the smell of his skin and the puffs of air hitting his jaw then he could push the rest of his outburst away. “Hayoung’s okay, Jongup. Hayoung’s alive.”
“I know, I know, now go in and look at her. Stroke her cheeks and kiss her palms and tell her you love her.”
The doctor was waiting by the door, ready to lead Himchan down the hallway to the intensive care unit where his daughter was waiting for him. Before Himchan could take one step out the door he turned to Jongup in confusion. “Aren’t you coming?”
“I’m sorry but it’s immediate family only in intensive care.” The doctor jumped in apologetically.
Himchan frowned, his eyes still on Jongup. “But Jongup is her family. If you don’t let him back you will hear her tantrum from here, trust me.”
The doctor sighed and waved Jongup forward. “Just don’t get her too over-stimulated right now. Two visitors is a lot for her to handle until she regains some strength. Talk softly and gently and whatever you do, please don’t try to punish her for what she did. She’s too weak for that right now.”
“I wasn’t going to punish her anyways.” Himchan reached towards Jongup’s hand as they walked, their fingers sliding against each other’s naturally by this point. “All she wanted was Jongup. I can’t fault her for that.” They stopped in front of a cracked door, Room 56 it proclaimed in tiny black letters. “Are you ready?”
Jongup squeezed his fingers and nudged Himchan forward. “Let’s go. I want to see our girl.”
The joy at seeing Hayoung breathing normally and reaching her tiny hands towards them was better than any beautiful painting Jongup had ever viewed. As soon as she saw them enter her eyes lit up and a grin spread across her face that showed off the new missing tooth that she had been so excited about two weeks earlier.
“Daddy!” Himchan had to be nudged towards her and Jongup was slightly worried that he would fall apart again but he managed to hold it together as he grasped her hand inside his own larger one and kissed her fingertips one by one. “When can we go home?”
Himchan was still silent, his eyes closed and body trembling, so Jongup jumped in for him. “You have to stay until the doctor says you can leave.” He smoothed the loose hair off her face with a smile. “Your hair is going to be so hard to brush that you’ll probably hate me afterwards.”
She wrinkled her nose, the perfect button nose that Jongup loved to rub his own against and make her giggle. “But you’ll do it nicely right? You always go slow when it hurts.”
Jongup would brush it one strand at a time if that was what she needed. “Of course I will, sweetheart.” He rested his hands on Himchan’s shoulders and rubbed a thumb across the nape of his neck in comfort. “Are you feeling okay? Do you want me or daddy to get you anything?”
With her father still trying to compose himself, Hayoung bit her lip and hid her face behind her hair. “I want my dolly.” She murmured shyly. “The one you got me for Valentine’s Day with the pink dress.”
“I’ll go and get it as soon as I leave here, okay? I promise.” Jongup took another step closer to Himchan and let him relax against his chest, his lips skimming across the lobe of his ear. “Talk to her, Himchan. She loves you.”
Himchan took a deep breath and opened his eyes to see his daughter looking worriedly at him, sheet being twisted tightly in her fists.
“Hi Princess.” He carefully touched the entrance to the IV on the top of her hand. “Daddy missed you.”
Hayoung looked at him for a moment and then turned her head away. “You wouldn’t even care if I was gone. Your new girlfriend is more important than me.”
With a relieved laugh, Himchan pulled the chair next to the bed closer and sat beside her, reaching for her hand again. “The only girl in my life is you and that’s not changing any time soon. We don’t have to talk about all of that right now though. Just know that Jongup isn’t going anywhere and you don’t ever have to worry about losing him, okay?”
Jongup’s heart tried its hardest to flutter at the news that Himchan considered his presence in their life a permanent thing, but deep down he knew that at any moment everything he had built here could come crashing down on top of him.
---
“You’re giving her the one that makes her sleepy. It’s ten in the morning, Himchan. She doesn’t need that.”
“But she barely slept last night and she’s exhausted.”
“Then let her fall asleep naturally. She doesn’t need to pass out for ten hours and wake up a zombie when it’s her normal bedtime.” Jongup sighed and grabbed him by the hips to move him away from the counter. “I put her daytime cough syrup in the bathroom. Go get it while I hide this one so you’re not tempted to knock your daughter unconscious.”
Himchan looked close to collapsing himself, the dark circles under his eyes making his already pale skin look even more ghostly. “I don’t like listening to her cough all night. I just want her to get some rest.”
Jongup turned around and pulled Himchan into his chest. His smaller body staggered under the heavier weight as Himchan fell into him, arms encircling him painfully tight and jaw digging into his collarbone. “Let me give her the medicine and get her settled. You go take a shower because you haven’t had one in like a month.”
“It’s been a day and a half.” Himchan corrected childishly, his fingertips poking into the softness of Jongup’s lower back. “And what kind of father would I be if I abandoned my daughter six days after she almost died and two days before her birthday?”
“One that knows she’s being taken care of.” He stroked his fingers through Himchan’s greasy hair and smiled against his temple. “Don’t you trust me?”
A hmm was his answer until the giant yawn Himchan was making ended. “More than anyone.” He clarified. His body drooped a tiny bit more as his eyes started to drift closed. “Sometimes I think she loves you more than me.”
He doubted that. He and Hayoung were best friends and being away from her for more than a few hours made him ache, but he had to keep telling himself that at the end of the day he wasn’t her father. They could never have what she had with Himchan.
“Of course she doesn’t.” Jongup tugged his hair making Himchan whine against his throat. “Go on. I’ve got this.”
He waited until Himchan had reluctantly dragged his feet towards the bedroom before he grabbed the daytime cough syrup Hayoung needed. The sound of the TV Jongup had bought her was muffled through the closed door but he could hear the opening notes to her favorite movie. “Hey little girl. How you doing?”
She pouted and lifted her arms towards him. “I want to go outside. Why can’t we play at the park?”
“Because it’s cold outside and you’re sick.” Her lips curled in disgust when he lifted the bottle of medicine up. “Don’t give me that look. You know you need it. Your daddy said you hardly slept because you coughed all night.”
“My throat hurts.”
Jongup made sure he poured the correct amount into the dosage cup and held it out to her. “And whose fault is it that you’re sick?”
Hayoung crossed her arms and turned her face away. “Uh-uh.”
“Maybe you should have thought about this before you ran away in the snow all by yourself.” Over the last few days they had tried numerous times to talk to her about what had happened but she stubbornly stayed tight-lipped and glared at them. “Let’s make a deal. You take your medicine and I will read you three books.”
That caught her attention. “Five.”
“Four.” He offered, knowing she would take the offer. When she came back from her bookcase a few minutes later with the four longest books she had he realized that maybe he had been outsmarted. “You’re lucky I like you.”
Hayoung grinned cheekily and patted the bed next to her. “Do the funny voices Papa.”
---
A gentle shaking on his arm drew him awake and he blinked sleepily up at an amused Himchan. His hair was brushed and dry and the tiredness under his eyes was still there but wasn’t as prominent as it was when he last saw him.
“Hey.” Jongup croaked out, stretching his free arm over his head. “What time is it?”
“Four.” Himchan helped him lift Hayoung off his chest and settle her back into her bed. “I guess we all needed a nap. Come have lunch with me.”
He rubbed his eyes and yawned. “It’s almost dinner time, Himchan.”
Himchan turned back to him with a grin. “Yeah but if we wait for dinner then we skipped a meal and that’s not healthy, Jongup. You would think you would know better than that.”
He rolled his eyes at Himchan’s twisted way of getting to eat twice in one evening but went along with it because not only was Himchan’s energy back (something Jongup had been worried about for days) but his stomach was rumbling something fierce inside of him.
“You didn’t fix this did you?” He eyed the plates piled high with food, more food than either of them had eaten in the last week. Three types of noodles, a mound of rice, barbequed strips of meat and even an over-sized bowl of sautéed vegetables were placed on each placemat. “This is enough carbs to kill a horse.”
“I ordered it and waited until I got it all together to wake you up.” Himchan pointed behind him to the coffee table. “I folded all the laundry while I waited. There were three baskets of it. We’ve really let this place fall behind.”
Jongup waited until he had shoved a mouthful of the meat into his mouth, eyes closing and a soft moan coming out from the amazing flavor. They had survived on boxed noodles and frozen pizza for the last few days and before that it was bland hospital food. This was almost exotic for him. “We had a lot of other things to concentrate on.” He picked the few onions that he could find out of his vegetable bowl and dropped them into Himchan’s. “She coughed a lot while I read to her but I don’t think it was as much as yesterday. The doctor said it would probably be a few more days before she pulled out of it so hopefully tomorrow will be even better.”
Himchan prodded into his own plate, the chopsticks moving things around but nothing ever actually making it into his mouth. He finally looked up and stared straight into Jongup’s eyes. “I haven’t thanked you yet. For taking care of her. For taking care of us.” He dropped his eyes again and chewed the corner of his cheek in embarrassment. “I wouldn’t have been able to do this by myself. So… Thank you.”
He wanted to tell him that thank you’s weren’t necessary. That he would bring down every star in the sky if that was what he was asked for. But he hoped Himchan already knew that.
“You’re welcome.”
part six