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Sirens.
Yelling.
Crying.
I’m cold. So cold.
Where am I?
I want my mom. I want my sister. I miss my dog.
I’m so cold.
I want to go back to sleep.
Emergency services didn’t think that Seokyoon was alive when they first arrived at Eden. Officer So and Mr. Ahn Heejoong were discovered first. The cops discovered Junghwa in the basement and she was the only conscious person on the premises. Her injuries were not that severe, so she was able to direct the team in the right direction.
“Jongwoo is here somewhere, he said his girlfriend was kidnapped by Dr. Seo. He came into the building several hours ago with a friend to retrieve her. The ahjumma owner and the guy who was killing the cats might still be around. They were running their operation out of the fourth floor. Be careful.”
When the team bounded up the steps, they saw Seokyoon unmoving on the floor, his white shirt covered in blood. Nearly his entire blood volume had leaked onto the floor. Another team would be arriving within minutes, and the first team’s job was to look for obvious survivors.
They made their way to the back of the fourth floor and found Jieun, alive but sedated, in the dentist’s chair. Jongwoo was splayed on the floor, beaten to minced meat, but still alive. Because of the bleeding in his lung, his breaths sounded like a water pump sucking air.
The couple were loaded onto stretchers and carried out of the building and into the ambulance. The second team arrived and assessed Seokyoon. They believed he was dead, but they still had to check. A technician pulled their stethoscope out of their bag and checked for a pulse, not expecting anything.
An impossibly slow, faint heartbeat emitted through the earpieces. The EMT gasped and rolled the man on his back and rubbed his sternum with his knuckle, frantically trying to wake him.
“Sir! Can you hear me! Can you wake up!” he yelled to Seokyoon, who didn’t respond in any form. The EMT called to his colleagues. “Get him on a stretcher now and get him on the first ambulance out. Tell the driver to call ahead and make sure they have at least six units of blood ready for him alone.”
A team of three loaded him onto the board, strapped him in, and two of them carried him down the four flights of stairs in a hurry. He was loaded into the same ambulance as Mr. Ahn and rushed to the closest trauma center.
The doctors kept him in a medically induced coma for four days as his body was replenished with blood and electrolytes. Seokyoon’s body needed to rest. He needed the rest prior to his assault, but now more than ever.
He underwent several surgeries. His Achilles needed to be reconstructed, presumably having been cut by Moonjo in his attempt to lure Jongwoo. Two and a half feet of his small bowel needed to be removed, having necrosed following the stab wounds. He had a small subarachnoid bleed that needed to be evacuated during a craniotomy. A hernia that formed in his diaphragm during his beatings was repaired. His liver, spleen, and large intestine all had tears that needed to be closed.
Seokyoon’s body was flushed with fluids and antibiotics, fighting off the infection that had developed during his time in that hellhole. The building was so filthy that even entering with those wounds put him at risk, let alone being left on the floor for hours after being stabbed with dirty knives and dental utensils.
Despite his heart stopping on three separate occasions, and two days of unstable vitals, Seokyoon survived. On the third night, he had made it a full twenty-four hours without his blood pressure bottoming out and the color began to return to his skin. The medical team all breathed a sigh of relief.
DAY 5
On his fifth day in the hospital, Seokyoon woke for the first time. There was a doctor, two nurses, and a police officer in his room. His eyes slowly opened to see the crowd of strangers around him in a room he did not recognize.
“Mr. Kang, I’m Dr. Choi. It is August 27th. You’ve been with us since the 22nd in a medically induced coma. First, can you tell me what year it is?”
Seokyoon looked around the room and saw no one he recognized as a wave of confusion hit him.
“Where am I? Is my mom here?” he asked, voice unsure and quiet.
Ow, my throat hurts.
“You’re at Seoul National University Hospital and you’re in the intensive care unit. Your mom is in the cafeteria, we told her she could take the time to eat since it might have taken a while for you to wake up. She should be back in a few minutes. Now, what year is it?”
“Um…2019?”
“Very good. Do you remember the date that I just told you?”
“August twenty…sorry. I don’t remember the last number,” he replied, leaning his head back against the pillow and closing his eyes. “My head hurts.”
The police officer approached the bed and stood next to him, leaning slightly down to his level.
“Hi, Seokyoon. I’m Officer So. I was a friend of Jongwoo’s. Do you remember who that is?”
Seokyoon cracked one eye and looked at her, trying to make sense of her words.
“Jongwoo…Oh! Jongwoo!” He quickly sat up in bed and tried to swing his legs to the edge, but the nurses stopped him from moving further. “Where is he?”
“Mr. Kang, you are still very injured. You can’t move from the bed. Please, you need to relax or you’ll injury yourself further,” the nurse ordered.
Injure myself further?
Seokyoon took stock of the pain in his body. Everything hurt, but in different ways. His head was throbbing. His stomach felt like a pile of rocks. His ankle felt like it was being stabbed. His mouth was pulsing, feeling both swollen in size and empty at the same time.
His mouth.
Flashes of the man from 304 entered his mind. His plyers. Hovering over him as he yanked out at least six of his teeth. Injecting him with something to keep him from passing out from the pain, but without relieving any of it.
“The residents...where...where are they? Is Jongwoo okay?” Seokyoon traced his teeth with his tongue. “My teeth…they’re gone.”
Junghwa sat on the edge of his bed and took his hand in hers.
“Jongwoo is fine. He’s still in the hospital as well, he’s a few doors down. And the residents are gone. Most of them are dead. Some we’re still looking for, but we believe they’ve been killed as well. You’re safe here, Seokyoon,” she reassured with a calm manner of speech.
“What about the tall one? 304?” he asked in a scared, panicked voice, sitting up straight in his hospital bed. He tried to run a hand through his hair, but the IV lines prevented that.
“Well, he’s-,”
“Miss, you’ll have to step out for a moment,” the doctor interrupted. “We need to finish his neurological exam and you’re raising his heartrate and blood pressure quite a lot.”
“Oh, I’m sorry, Dr. Choi. Seokyoon, I’ll be back later to check on you, but it’s likely that other detectives will be here to interview you and fill you in on other details.”
“Thank you, officer.” He did his best to smile at her, but his face hurt too much for his usual bright grin.
She gripped his hand tight before letting go and exiting the room.
She seems nice. I can see why Jongwoo is friends with her.
“Okay, Mr. Kang. We’ll finish your neuro exam, take some blood, and then haul you off to the MRI machine to make sure that you’re healing properly. Does that sound alright with you?” the senior nurse chirped, sporting a professional smile.
“Can I just see my mom first?”
“Sure, honey. We’ll call her up from the cafeteria so you two can catch up before we take you out for your scans.”
“Thank you, ma’am, but could you not call me ‘honey’, please?”
DAY 6
Seokyoon had a fretful night of sleep. He was maxed out on pain meds and more and more memories from those three days at Eden were filling his mind.
The dentist chair.
The laughing twin.
The ahjumma telling me to hide.
Jongwoo not understanding my pleas.
The tennis ball.
The next morning his mom left the hospital for the first time since he had been admitted. She had to go back to the countryside and return to work or her boss at the dry cleaner was going to fire her. Seokyoon assured her that he was okay, and that she should go back home. The doctor told him that he was going to be there for at least three more weeks, and she couldn’t stay there that whole time.
The detectives arrived to interview him, nowhere near as comforting as Officer So. They told him that Seo Moonjo had killed Ms. Eom, Deukjong, Deuksoo, Jongwoo’s Boss Jaeho, and Kihyuk (a man he never even met) who had killed one of their cops. Mr. Hong was killed by Ms. Eom in front of Officer So while she was unconscious. Several other people had gone missing around the residence in the months leading up to their fateful night, not including the pension murders they were associated with.
All that carnage from one group of people.
Then, to finish the whole thing, Jongwoo told detectives he killed Moonjo after he killed the other residents that night.
I’m glad Jongwoo was able to fight him off and survive. He must have been so scared. He saved his girlfriend, too.
He told the detectives about what Jongwoo had told him: something was happening on the fourth floor, people had disappeared, and he was scared. He told them about the trap Moonjo tried to set that Jongwoo didn’t fall for. He told them about his teeth getting stolen for a present, and the deranged attachment Moonjo had for the man in 303. He told them about the game the laughing twin and Ms. Eom played, with him as the toy.
Seokyoon remembered them stabbing him so many times. He cried. He cried for his mother, he cried for his life. Then everything went black, and he didn’t remember anything else until he woke up in his warm hospital bed with stiff sheets, too many tubes going in and out of his body.
After the cops left, he asked the orderly if he could take him down to visit Jongwoo. His phone hadn’t been given back to him yet and neither had his belongings from Eden. They were all being held as evidence. He had no other connection to the outside world.
The nurse changed his foley, took a few new vials of blood, and then returned with a wheelchair. He helped him comb his hair and brush his teeth, attempting to make him presentable for the social interaction. An orderly wheeled Seokyoon down the hall to Jongwoo’s room after setting up his IV pole with all his bags and tubes.
They entered the room and Jongwoo was sitting cross legged on the bed in his hospital attire, a woman in civilian clothes in the chair next to him.
I guess that’s his girlfriend. She’s pretty.
“You have another visitor, Mr. Yoon,” the orderly announced to the room. The woman smiled, but Jongwoo looked up with a stoic face.
Seokyoon waved as the orderly parked his wheelchair next to the bed.
“Hyung, how are you? They haven’t told me much, medical confidentiality and all.”
“I’m fine,” he stated unceremoniously.
The three of them sat alone in silence for several moments before the girlfriend spoke.
“Hi, Seokyoon. I’m Jieun.” She walked around the bed to shake his hand. “Are you recovering well?”
“Nice to meet you, Jieun. I can see why Jongwoo moved to Seoul for you, you’re very pretty,” he mentioned as she smiled. “And I think I’m doing okay; the doctors haven’t given me any bad news since I woke up. That’s all I can hope for at the moment, right?”
“That’s great. I hope you have a quick recovery.” Jieun looked between the two men and cleared her throat. “Well, I need to meet my boss and discuss when I’ll be coming back to work. I’ll leave you two with your privacy. It was nice to meet you, Seokyoon.” She patted him on the shoulder and left the room.
Seokyoon waited for Jongwoo to speak first now that they were alone, but he just pulled out his laptop.
“It’s nice that they gave you your computer back, I still don’t have my phone,” Seokyoon stated, trying to start the conversation. Jongwoo didn’t look up.
“Jongwoo, are you okay? Has the psychiatrist visited you yet? She stopped by this morning for me. Our first session is tomorrow.”
“I don’t need therapy,” he professed flatly.
“It couldn’t hurt, right? It might feel good to tell someone everything that happened that’s not a cop or your girlfriend. They can’t tell anyone what you say in there.”
“Unless you’ve killed someone,” he clarified, finally making eye contact with Seokyoon.
“But the cops already know about 304, you don’t have anything to worry about.”
“I guess,” he mumbled before going back to typing.
The conversation went much like that for the rest of the hour that Seokyoon was there. He would ask a question, hoping to get Jongwoo to talk, but he would shut down after answering. He never once asked Seokyoon how he was doing or how he got caught by Moonjo.
At noon, like promised, the orderly picked him up and wheeled him back to his room. Seokyoon thought he would feel reinvigorated after talking with his friend, but he only felt worse.
He laid in bed watching a game show marathon on the tiny TV for the next several hours, drifting in and out of sleep. He had no phone, no computer. Every little bit, a nurse or an orderly would come check his vitals and ask him if he needed anything. They gave him soup for lunch, still not giving him hard food due to his teeth.
Who knew surviving a mass murderer would be so boring and sad?
Trying to stay awake, Seokyoon endeavored to examine his IV pump machine and learn how it worked.
This sucks. I’m going to die from boredom.
As he was contemplating his prison break, he heard a knock at the door.
“You busy?” a woman asked, poking her head into the frame.
“Oh, Officer So, come in!” he exclaimed, perhaps a little too excited. “Sorry, I’ve just been a little stir-crazy today.”
“No worries, Seokyoon. Did you get to see Jongwoo today?” she inquired in a cheery voice.
Seokyoon sighed, adjusted his pillows, and elevated his hospital bed.
“Yes, but he didn’t seem to be that interested in talking to me.”
“That seems like him. He’s been a little distant since everything happened. He won’t even talk to his mom; she went back to Busan a couple days ago. He’s just been keeping his nose in his laptop, writing that book of his.” She sat her purse down on the table, sighing deeply. She was wearing casual clothing, a white blouse and jeans with sunglasses pushed back in her hair.
“Wait, the crime book? He’s still writing that? After he fucking lived a crime book?” Seokyoon blushed and put his hand over his mouth. “Oh, I’m sorry for swearing, ma’am.”
Junghwa laughed and sat at the foot of Seokyoon’s bed.
“It’s alright. I work with a bunch of gruff old men; I hear swearing all day long. And please, don’t call me ma’am. Junghwa is fine,” she clarified, a turn at the edge of her lips.
Seokyoon smiled at her, a little bigger than yesterday.
“Junghwa. I like that name.”
“Seokyoon’s not half bad either,” she mentioned quietly, returning the smile. “How are you feeling? I know you’re probably still hurting, but hopefully it’s better than it was.”
“I was definitely in less pain when I was in the coma,” he joked. “But they changed up my pain meds today, so I feel better than I did last night. I am very hurt by the fact that they shaved a spot out of my beautiful hair.” He pushed away some of his locks on the left side of his head, exposing a buzzed area and a bandage.
“I hear bald patches as a result of brain surgery are very in these days.”
She’s funny.
“So, Junghwa, are you here to interview me? I spoke with those two guys this morning.”
“No, I’m not actually an investigator on this case.” She took a brief pause, looking around the room. “I was there too. In the basement.”
“Oh, I’m so sorry that happened.”
“Why are you apologizing to me? It’s not like you’re the one that attacked me. I think I got hurt the least out of everyone. You’re lucky to be here at all,” Junghwa exclaimed, volume increasing the longer she went.
“Just because you weren’t as bad off as other people doesn’t mean that you didn’t go through something horrid,” he said softly.
“Wow, you sound like my therapist,” she mumbled, picking at the loose thread from the blanket.
“As an artist, I’m exceptionally in-tuned to human emotions.”
She laughed and rolled her eyes, bringing the smile back to her face.
“Yes, I’ve heard about your rapping. Your mother’s very proud.”
Seokyoon smiled and nodded.
I love my mom.
“If you’re not here to interview me, why are you here then?” He inquired, tone light but curious.
“I just wanted to check in on you, make sure you were hanging in there. See if you needed anything.”
“Could you get my phone and computer? I think they’re in evidence. I’m so bored and this TV sucks so bad,” he complained dramatically, sticking out his bottom lip like a child asking for ice cream.
“That shouldn’t be a problem, but in case there are hang-ups, anything else?”
“Do you know how I could get some books?”
“I can bring you some tomorrow, but I think Jongwoo has some in his room if you-,”
“No, no, I can’t read that stuff,” he interrupted. “I can’t read crime or any of that dark crap.”
“Well, what do you like to read?” She asked, cocking her head to the side.
“I like young adult fiction, light fantasy, and…romance,” he admitted, only slightly embarrassed.
Junghwa took a second to let his request sink in and smiled.
“I think I can make that work,” she replied softly.
They sat in comfortable silence for a moment until a nurse entered the room.
“Miss, visitor hours are ending. Mr. Kang, we need to change your foley and colostomy bag and take another chem panel.”
Seokyoon blushed and briefly glanced at Junghwa before looking back to the nurse and clearing his throat.
“Oh, okay. Seokyoon, I’ll bring you some books tomorrow and I’ll try to get you an update on your personals. I’ll see you then, okay?”
“Thank you, Junghwa, It’s very sweet of you to come by and help me. I’ll see you tomorrow.”
She patted Seokyoon on the leg and rose from the bed, picking up her purse on her way out of the door. She bowed lightly to the nurse and waved one last time.
The nurse approached the bed with a supplies cart and put on a fresh pair of gloves.
“Is that your girlfriend? She can spend the night, we just have to register her, and we can bring a cot out of the closet,” the nurse informed kindly.
“Psh, no, girlfriend? No. We just met,” he explained.
“Sure, Mr. Kang. Now lay back and roll your hip so I can place this towel underneath you and change your catheter.”
Seokyoon groaned and rubbed his face with his hands.
“How long am I going to have to pee and poop in a bag?”
“You should be peeing in a plastic urinal in a few days, but you’ll probably keep the colostomy for about four months.”
He flopped back against the mattress as the nurse pressed the remote and flattened the bed.
I wonder how long it’ll be before I can go out on a date.