Chapter Text
Sunoo had always been a weak and sickly child. If someone in his class so much as sniffled or a neighbor coughed, it was inevitable that Sunoo would get sick. He'd always felt like a burden to his struggling parents when he felt his nose getting runny and throat sore. He was used to being sick more often than healthy, money only being spared for when he was really sick.
Sunoo thinks this probably qualified as really sick as he bobs back and forth between wakefulness and a pitch black faint. He remembers going outside to grab new logs for the fire, mother busy with dinner. He remembers the texture of wood beneath his finger tips, and then his face? He opens his eyes what feels like moments later to find himself in his father’s arms as he races down the street to the local physician. Eyelids close, open again to a nurse wringing out a towel and placing the blessedly cool item to his burning forehead. With him semi-awake, she insists he sit up drink some water and have a few pills. This cycle of black and pills repeats itself over and over, till the feverish haze breaks and Sunoo opens his eyes one day and simply stares at the bed across from his. It is an ordinary dark wood framed bed with clean white sheets, but its occupant captures his attention.
A boy with black hair lies with his back facing him, slow rise and fall of his chest. When he flips over, he grunts and covers his eyes with an arm, light from the rising sun cutting across his closed lids. He puffs out a sigh, then sits and rubs his eyes. As if feeling his gaze, the boy turns and looks back at Sunoo. He looks even younger than Sunoo with his round, boyish face. Dark brown eyes flash in surprise before turning up slightly with a grin.
"Hello, welcome back to the land of the living."
"Thanks," Sunoo tries clearing his throat to rid himself of the scratchy pitchy tone. "Where are my parents?"
The boy’s eyes widen. "Oh wow, you really must have been out of it. Your parents aren't here, you're at a care facility in the countryside."
Sunoo furrows his brows, confused about what he's woken up to and worried about the possibility of how much his most recent health issue must have cost his parents. "Countryside? We live in the middle of the city. My parents can't afford this, wha-" He huffs as he sits up, muscles stiff and protesting. How long was he asleep?
"Whatever you had, must have been pretty bad if you don’t even remember getting here."
The door opens then, and a woman in a stark white apron carrying a tray approaches his bed. She looks around his mother’s age with brown hair pinned up and a soft smile crinkling the edges of her eyes. "Thought I heard a new voice. Glad you’re up. Niki, run along now, don't want to be late for breakfast, yes?"
Glancing back to the boy, his shoulders are ramrod stiff, a strong contrast to his previously relaxed posture. "Yes, ma'am," he replies, grabbing some clothes and leaving the room quickly.
Sunoo didn't think the woman's tone was especially sharp or authoritative, but that reaction was almost...fearful. He's brought back to attention when his eye is stretched open. The woman, presumably a nurse, checks him over, noting his temperature and heartrate have finally returned to normal along with regaining consciousness. She tells him it was a bit touch and go, doctors in the city couldn't figure out what was wrong, finally resorting to sending him out to this regional facility in the hopes that some clean air might help him fight whatever was ailing him. She swears up and down, there's something about clean air that will cure any aliment, why would folks ever consider living in a city. Sunoo nods along and gladly chugs down a glass of water, handing it back when it is empty.
"Uhh," he hesitantly interrupts. "Well, now that I'm better now, may I leave? I'd hate to waste any more of your time." and any more of my parent’s non-existent money. A countryside hospital? Sunoo can’t even fathom the travel expenses, let alone anything else.
"Oh, you sweet boy, you're not fully well yet. You're going to stay here until you are the absolute pinnacle of health."
"I feel quite well right now, I assure you! I can't possibly cost my parents any mo-"
"You'll be staying here till the Doctor says you can leave." It was startingly fast, the switch that came over her face. One moment a soft smile and the next a glare so sharp it could cut. Warm, pleasantly mundane rambling to a cold, harsh tone. "Okay?" And then it was back again, a smile that Sunoo now could see was a bit oddly pinched, just a touch too fake.
All he could do was mutely nod as he was handed some clothes and told to change and head downstairs for breakfast. The nurse leaves with the tray, shutting the door softly behind her.
On autopilot, he put on the white button up and black pants, mind scrambling to make sense of everything. He still had little to no idea where he was or how long he had to stay, where his parents were and how they were possibly going to afford this level of care, but he did know why the boy, Niki, had looked so scared. Sunoo did not want to get on that nurse's bad side.
As he steps out of the room, he finds two closed doors across the hall and one to his left slightly ajar, revealing it to be a bathroom. He closes the bedroom door and walks right, looking over the banister to the room below, gasping at the sight. The dark wood staircase leads down to a foyer carpeted in a rich red. As he slowly steps down the stairs, feeling only just a tad weak after however long he was bedridden, he feels overwhelmed with the opalescence that surrounds him: from the vases of fresh flowers and gleaming dark stained wooden furniture to the starch white curtains drawn back and moving slightly with the breeze and simply how much space there is in each room. Following the sounds of silverware on china, he walks through a sitting room, with a few plush green chairs and a brown piano tidily tucked in the corner. The open archway led to a dining room. A large dining room, with nine long tables, but the current occupants were all settled around only one. Huge windows make up the entirety of the back wall, letting in sun light that almost obscures a woman sitting at a small table, polishing silverware. She has long straight black hair fashioned in a bun and looks only to be in her mid-twenties. It wasn't the same nurse as before, but Sunoo didn't want to find out if her temperament was similar, so he quietly but hurriedly makes his way to the table.
He sits at an empty setting and glances around the table. The round-faced boy sits with five others that have equally as dark of hair but looked to be a bit older if their sharper features were anything to go by. They all look at him as he takes his place but no one utters a word. Even Niki, sitting across from him, only gives him a brief smile before returning to his food. Sunoo serves himself from the platters in the center of the table and eats quietly. Even as the boys finish off their meals, no one gets up to leave. They simply dabbed at their mouth with a napkin and remained seated. Not wanting to hold up whatever was happening, Sunoo finishes up quickly. As soon as he laid his napkin down, a pop across the room startles him.
The woman was no longer polishing, but instead divvying out pills next to glasses of water along the small table. When she returns to behind the table and closes the last lid to the line of pill bottles, the six boys rise as one and start walking towards her. Sunoo is startled but follows a moment behind as they each pick up a glass and the pills one by one. He hovers behind them, unsure.
“You’ll have your first dose at dinner,” the woman says before turning back to the line of boys. One by one, she goes down the line, looking into their mouths. When she gets to the end, she nods then says, “You are dismissed.”
The six quietly murmur their thanks for the meal, then head towards the sitting room. The woman doesn’t even glance at Sunoo still hesitantly standing in place. She picks up the tray full of pills and leaves through a door that she firmly shuts behind her. Sunoo nervously wrings his hands, glancing between the closed door and the sitting room, before turning and heading towards the boys.
They seem more like the young boys they are in that moment, laughing and talking, smiles on their faces. Niki turns, noticing Sunoo in the archway and pulls him by the arm into the room.
"Our roommate finally woke up this morning, Jungwon!"
A boy with cat like eyes stands and offers his hand. "It's nice to finally meet you...?"
Sunoo quickly shakes his offered hand. "Sunoo, Kim Sunoo."
The boy smiles brightly. "Yang Jungwon."
Each boy introduces themselves one by one. Lee Heeseung has a small face and long gangly frame. When he smiles, his nose scrunches a tiny bit, making him appear younger despite being the oldest in the room. Park Jongseong, or Jay as he asks to be called, has longish bangs that he's constantly brushing away from his sharp eyes. He introduces himself very primly, his high-class manners apparent. A snort from the boy beside him causes the posh impression to crumble with his shout of "Yah!" in rebuke.
"Ignore him," he murmurs with a slight smirk, his cool eyes warming as he shakes Sunoo’s hand. "He likes to show off his manners at the start, but he's just as bad as the rest of us. I'm Park Sunghoon."
After Sunoo releases Sunghoon's hand, Jay grabs his shoulder and the two squabble good naturedly, obviously longtime friends as they poke fun at each other. Both of Sunoo’s hands are suddenly grasped excitedly by a sharp featured boy with a large grin. "I'm Shim Jaeyoon, but please call me Jake." He pumps their joined hands up and down happily and Sunoo can’t help but grin in return.
As the morning bleeds into afternoon, Sunoo finds himself relaxing. The boys easily brought him into conversations, Sunghoon and Jake debating about different breeds of dogs and what made one cuter than another, and sillily singing along to songs Jay played on the piano. While the others sang, Niki danced, letting the notes flow through him. He pulled Sunoo over to join him. Sunoo had no idea what he was doing and it made it all the more enjoyable. Everyone clapped and cheered when Heeseung sat down at the piano and proudly played the worst rendition of Twinkle Twinkle Sunoo had ever heard. As good as his voice was, he didn’t seem to have a knack for playing, but his sweeping bows after the 'performance' made the others only laugh harder.
As Sunoo catches his breath, he realizes how sidetracked he had gotten. He got so caught up in their energy and laughter that just 'clicked' with Sunoo, that he forgot to ask the important questions. Clearing his throat, he asks, "So, what kind of care facility is this?”
The silence is thick and cloying, a sharp contrast to the laughter ringing out moments ago. The boys glance at each other, and Jungwon eventually takes it upon himself to answer. "Well...when we each came here, we were very sick, like you, and the nurses treated us until were better...but not well enough to leave? Um..." he glances at the others before his eyes return to Sunoo. "They keep trying to find the right medicines and dosages, cause we each have new or returning symptoms."
"Like...like what?"
"I lose my voice," Heeseung volunteers. "I go days at a time not being able to make so much as a peep." He smiles, but it no longer reaches his eyes "That's why I like to sing so much, when I can."
They each speak about their issues. Unlike their introductions earlier, there's a much more somber tone in the air, and a lot of halfhugs and hand squeezes. Jake gets inexplicably angry and breaks things. Niki can't move his legs sometimes and has to be carried around. Sunghoon alternates between not sleeping a wink to passing out for days at a time. Jay, for all the languages he knows, forgets it all and struggles to even say his own name.
"Sometimes, I can't breathe." Jungwon grasps at his chest, Heeseung rubbing comforting circles on his back. "My heart races and my lungs just....I can’t get a full breath. It lasts only about a minute, but it's so scary."
Sunoo is shocked to say the least. These were all healthy happy boys, laughing and singing and dancing only a short while ago, what do you mean they were sick? He didn’t feel sick himself, but would he be the same and have these random, horrible symptoms? More than anything though, he worried about his parents. Where were they? How could they possibly afford any of this care? "What ... what about the costs? My parents don't make much, I can't be such a burden to them."
"The care is free, in exchange for testing out the new drugs," Jake says quietly.
"New drugs?" Sunoo says startled.
Jay hums. "We don't have really common ailments, there's not really a cure yet, so the care and staying here is free in exchange for trying out the new prescriptions. Hopefully, they find something that works, and we can finally get better."
Sunoo turns his gaze to his hands, watching as they twist and fuss as he sorts through this information. So, his parents aren't going to pay a dime? Nothing? What a relief. Free health care in exchange for testing drugs meant to make him better? He honestly understands why his parents would be willing to agree. It bothers him a little that they didn't ask his opinion. They didn't have to, given he wasn't an adult yet or really in any state to respond, but they normally included him in decisions relating to himself. But it was too good of an offer to turn down.
Sunoo and the rest of the boys glance up when a bell chimes from the other room.
"Oh, lunch," Niki says softly. He pulls Sunoo along with him as they all file into the dining room. Neither of the nurses are present, only a platter of sandwiches and a garden salad on the table they ate breakfast at this morning.
Unlike this morning however, lunch is loud and merry, chasing away the dark conversation with bright laughter. Following the food, the boys show him around the manor, because it is too large to be called a house. The sitting room and dining room he was already familiar with. The rest of the first floor was off limits but consisted of the two nurses’ rooms, the kitchen, and scullery. The boys said there was nearly nothing that bothered Yeonji and her apathetic nature was much preferable to Jaegin. They recommended being on his best manners around her and not to ask questions. If he wanted to ask something, ask Yeonji. At worst, she would just ignore him. A set of stairs next to the kitchen led downstairs, where all the medicine and medical equipment was, along with the Doctor's office and quarters. Again, off limits, but he would probably get checkups regularly like the rest of them and would see it soon. Outside there was a porch with a few chairs and an expansive yard. On good weather days and when they felt up to it, they were allowed outside as long as they stayed within the fence line of the house. The fence kept out the furry neighbors from the extensive woods around the house, but they never even spotted a rabbit outside, much less anything actually fearsome. Upstairs there was a storage room with outgrown toys and damaged furniture that the boys had converted into a club house. Besides the piano sitting room, this is where they spent the most time. There was a hallway full of unused bedrooms, and then the short hallway Sunoo had left this morning. The doors across the hall from the one he woke up in were also bedrooms, with Heeseung and Jake in one and Sunghoon and Jay in the other.
"Honestly though Sunghoon and Jake are a package deal, so Heeseung and I usually have one more or less roommates any given night." Jay says.
Niki scoffs jokingly, saying they are putting a perfectly good bed to waste. All the boys turn to the youngest, telling him off as Niki just laughs. Evidently, Niki never sleeps in his own bed. Even this morning, he was in Jungwon's bed. Each person regals a tale of their surprise plus one. Sunoo was laughing and laughing, each story funnier than the last, until Niki slides his arm across his shoulders.
"Y'know Sunoo, your bed looked really comfy this morning."
He gasp laughs, "Wha-what?"
"It's tradition at this point: new kid has to suffer through a week of Niki," Jungwon says with a smirk.
Niki sniffs at that. "I'll have you know I am an absolute joy."
The conversation devolves into denial and laughter and Sunoo feels so warm. He may still be a little lost, but he thinks it would be pleasant to find his way along with this group of boys.