AN: Aye yo heyy everyone! Kristy here~ I'm so excited working on this this fanfic with my partner Crystal. Please give us your support :)
But OMG CHANYEOL, WHAT HAPPENS TO HIM?! Ready to find out?
Here we gooooo~ enjoy!
Sky rushes hurriedly to a towering guy with distinctively large ears and what he lacks in brain cells makes up for it in his ears as due to the shock and awe of seeing a pair of girls talk their way out of the status of damsels-in-distress, he subconsciously steps back from the situation. He steps right into the line of traffic on the streets of Seoul. He steps right in front of an incoming black sedan hurtling towards him at an unearthly speed. He hears the droning honks and sees the vehicle a little too late. He tries to say something, but words just collect in his throat. The deer caught in the headlights, too stunned to move.
It will all be over within a few seconds' passing, but he couldn't even close his eyes.
Sky quickly darts in and out of people's ways, throwing her hand out, and roughly grabs the edge of the would-be road kill's sleeve. She yanks him hard and out of harm's way. He sees her and doesn't really register anything except for the panicking look in her eyes, but she looks away. As seconds goes by, she realizes that by the path the boy is falling, she'll be crushed when he lands on her. It's too late now. The idiot also trips over the curb, propelling himself faster to the ground and completely overwhelming her strength. The chorus of "Chanyeol! Chanyeol!" comes crashing around her ears as the blunt force of his weight merges with gravity, slamming her against the concrete pathway. Sky lets out a cry as her back takes in most of the impact and squeezes her eyes shut, bracing for the full attack.
It never comes.
Shouts and yelps burst in the air and the wind gets knocked out of her lungs, being shoved out by sudden hits against her sternum and throat. She slowly opens her eyes to see the night sky overhead, craning her neck to the direction the odd sounds were coming from. Sky's eyes widen. Instead of landing completely on her, the stupid guy manages to take down more victims to break his fall. She recognizes some of their faces from only encountering them a couple of minutes before. Groaning and yelling in Korean profanity, the girl with a stature of five feet and four inches is pinned down among them, a pile of human beings sprawled on the pavement and catching the eyes of bystanders. She could barely move from both the random arms and legs draped on top of her and the dull ache running up and down her spine.
"SKY!" Hazel screams, holding back her hysteria, shoving people out her way to get to her fallen friend's side and tries her best to move her out of the morass of people. Kris and Tao and the others, who didn't rush out fast enough to help their friend, rushes over also, untangling them from each other and acting as supports with their arms slung over each other's shoulders. Those unhurt holds the injured steadily to keep them from falling over and various degrees of pain registers on the five boys that became hurt in place of a possible death. The one that Hazel figures to be Chanyeol clings to a guy a little shorter than him, murmuring encouraging words under his breath to keep him going, and limps bit by bit towards Hazel and Sky, the latter holding onto the former tightly and could barely walk herself.
"Are you okay?" he asks surprisingly softly considering his large stature, but his words come out slow and deliberate, barely able to mask the amount of pain he's experiencing. Sky has no idea what he just said but caught the underlying tones of worry. She only nods, slumping against Hazel's side for support and refuses to speak anymore.
"Where's the nearest hospital?" a stern voice cuts through the air bluntly. They turn to see one of the taller guys with tanned skin holding onto someone, only a few inches taller than the pair of girls, with an expression that is as close to murderous as you can get. His large eyes, brown colors floating in a sea of white, focusing intensely at the girls, especially Sky. If looks could kill, she wouldn't last a second any longer.
Kris hastily calls out a name, Joonmyun, who wasn't injured and had knelt next to one of the fallen who luckily doesn't seem too hurt as he clasps his hand on his head. Joonmyun comes over quickly and discusses with the others on what to do and the conversation remains in hushed, foreign tones.
Hazel turns her attention to her friend. "Are you okay?"
Sky breathes sharply. "Yeah."
"Really?"
"No."
"You little liar," Hazel tries to rouse a reaction out of her, but she only receives a small smile in return. Tao takes up Sky's other arm, not saying anything as he helps keep her upright and stable gently. Hazel appreciates the sincerity. "Let's get to a hospital."
Hazel and the others waits patiently in the lobby of the too-clean emergency room, though "patiently"would not be the best word to describe it. Anxiety hangs over them like a cloud and nobody could really sit still. She keeps adjusting her glasses every so often, pushing them up the bridge of her nose while fighting off the urge to move her leg up and down to fight off the nerves. Her fingers move without a thought, weaving in and out of her hair curling around her elbows and tapping against her legs. The guys aren't faring better, with some pacing around the room in their attempts to fight off the nerves, while others scatter themselves around the room sitting in the chairs, either quietly conversing with one another or tampering with their cellular devices. Hazel can hear Joonmyun faintly in the hallway around the corner, talking to someone on the phone and apologizing over and over. It must be someone important, or they must have missed something important tonight. Feelings of guilt takes hold of her, settling over her fidgety senses as she clasps her hands together and stares at her lap.
"Are you okay?" Tao asks as he quietly sits next to her. She doesn't look up at her hands, clenched so tightly that her knuckles are turning white.
"Fine," she says, wondering how she even got herself in a bizarre situation. Instead of celebrating a close friend's birthday, Hazel and Sky are in the least festive place possible. Feelings mount on top of each other, building up and higher and she finds herself on her feet. "I'm going to get something to drink. Do you want anything?"
He shakes her head as she makes herself scarce, turning into the hallway, giving a wave and smiling at Joonmyun, and begins to aimlessly wander the corridors for something she's not sure really exists. Doctors and nurses takes no heed to Hazel as she half-attempts to find some sort of vending machine and the other time to kill time, puting off going back to the awkward environment stirring up in the waiting room as much as she can. Hazel calls Sooyeon finally, but the birthday girl fails to pick up after a few times, so she left a message apologizing for not showing up and promising a full explanation. Armed with a flowery can of green tea, she makes her way back and just as she's about to turn the corner, angry voices greets her. Hazel leans against the wall, her back pressed flat and tries not to pay attention. It's not her business. The voices rise and fall, shushing if it gets too loud, but it sounds pretty serious.
A voice, clear as day and just as familiar, rings in the air. She recognizes it belonging to the boy with the murderous eyes and seems to be an accusation of some sorts to something, or to someone. He sounds so calm for someone who seemingly gave Sky the devil's eye. The voices of the seven guys alone in the room never rises above murmurs and mutters, but they might as well have shouted to one another, speaking too fast to be understood and anger generally buzzes around the waiting room and spills into the hallway over where Hazel is. She sighs, tossing the can back and forth between her hands and staring at the scrawling on the ceilings. How can you walk into something and not make it worse?
"Ah, Hazel?" She looks up to see another unfamiliar face dressed in a gray sweater and jeans. It's one of them, Kris and Tao's friends. The one startling feature he has that puts her off is his fascinatingly large, almond-shaped eyes that would have looked buggy on anyone else, but with his slightly chubby cheeks and shaggy black hair hanging around his ears, this guys seems to make it work and make it work well.
"Yes?" she replies, letting the alien word settle on her tongue and letting the gears in her mind shift over to another language. He proceeds to ask her something but because of recent events numbing her mind, she couldn't keep up with words translating to gibberish.
"I'm sorry, um, what - I mean what is - what's the word - ugh, wait -"
He laughs good-naturedly at her failed tries, putting his hand up in a gesture of peace. "It's okay, try again."
"Sorry," Hazel obliges, "my Korean isn't very good."
He wave sit off. "It's not bad at all, but I don't think you're Korean, are you?"
"No, I'm Chinese."
"Really? Your English was very good when we heard it."
She cocks her head to the side. "Oh, yeah, Sky and I are visiting from the United States."
He looks intrigued. "You're from America and you're Chinese too? How did you even learn Korean then?
"We learned it on the side and - not important," Hazel gestures behind her at the direction towards the discussion that is fighting a losing battle of being quiet. What is going on?"
His eyebrows knit together, betraying the cool expression he kept in his childlike eyes. "Nothing important. They're always arguing over something."
She can tell how uncomfortable he is, shifting his weight back and forth. "It is important, isn't it?" she says quietly. "Is it over what happened? With your friends getting hurt?"
He reluctantly nods. "It's sooooooomething like that, but you really shouldn't worry, it's nothing serious."
The supposedly "not-serious" conversation going on around the corner escalates. But this time, Hazel can hear them, loud and clear.
"It's their fault that we're here in the first place! If we didn't stop to help them, Chanyeol, Yixing, Jongin, Luhan, and Jongdae wouldn't be here if it weren't for them! AISH, REALLY!"
Loud footsteps quickly follow and someone roughly shoves Hazel aside, forcing her to drop her drink and letting it clatter to the ground. When she looks up to protest, she's met with squinted eyes and heavy breathing. This is the guy who was helping up Chanyeol, supporting him even though he is a good head shorter. She was wrong from before. The murderous eyes she met before are a joyful sight compared to the guy standing before her, his cheeks flushed with ire.
He glares at the guy she was trying to convince to tell her what's going on. "What the hell are you doing, Minesok? Hanging out with her?" he says harshly before shoving past him and stomping away.
"Baekhyun!" Minesok says, his words falling on deaf ears. He quickly turns to Hazel, lost for words and completely rattled. "I'm sorry about that, Hazel."
She shakes her head as he picks up the green tea and drops it in her waiting hands. "No, don't worry. Go after him. He needs someone right now."
The corners of Minesok's mouth goes up slightly as he pats her arm before scurrying off to find his furious friend. She cradles the can in her arm, her fingers tracing a noticeable dent in the candy-cane-striped carnations on the drink. If she stays here any longer, swimming in this unbearable tension, she could end up drowning, or make things even worse, whichever came first. God, she didn't mean any of this to happen, especially for her best friend, Sky. The air stings her eyes and she rubs them as she enters the waiting room again.
The awkwardness intensifies greatly and she meets the eyes of everyone, who some she thinks, share the same sentiments as that guy, Baekhyun. She doesn't try to hide her knowledge of what happened in her absence. It's her fault; it's her and Sky's fault. Hazel could barely hear Joonmyun repeating the doctor's comments in that they find no major problems except for Chanyeol's ankle, but they're keeping everybody overnight in case. She gathers whatever strength she has left and apologizes for the incident, informing her decision to go back to the hotel for the night. They offer to walk her back, but she politely declines and hurries out of the sliding doors, straight into the biting cold air. She straightens up the collar of her trench coat and hurries away, trying not to cry.
"Hazel, wait!" She looks over her shoulder to see Tao, wide-eyed and coatless holding out a crumpled piece of paper. "This is my and Kris' numbers, if you run into anymore trouble and need someone to call."
She didn't need it, but takes it from him anyways. "I doubt that I will run into something I can't handle."
He quickly shakes his head, frowning. "I didn't mean it like that -"
"It's fine," she holds up the paper as a gesture of peace, "thank you, Tao. I'll see you tomorrow, hopefully."
"Hazel."
Tao lets her name roll off his tongue, tinged with a heavy accent, and doesn't say anything else, just her name with no goodbyes attached, standing there in a laughable outfit of a thin long-sleeved shirt and jeans that does nothing for the freezing temperatures of Seoul. For some reason, he smiles, the corners of his lips turned up in an obvious fashion as if for encouragement.
Hazel tucks the paper into her purse and walks away without giving it a second thought, her long hair whipping behind her as her mind wanders and dances and wanders to try to make sense of this moment of life.