𝐨𝐭𝐡𝐞𝐫 𝐡𝐚𝐥𝐟, 𝐩. 𝐬𝐮𝐧𝐠𝐡𝐨𝐨𝐧

hospital

𓆩♡𓆪

time had passed, and the two best friends' communication had gotten lesser and lesser. as always, it wasn't like they wanted it to be like this, it's just with the countless hours sunghoon spent practicing for their upcoming challenges and countless hours spent filming, combined with the hours jangmi was spending in the highly rigorous sm entertainment practice rooms, despite her and her four girls already being secured to debut later in the year, it seemed nearly impossible.

it was a tuesday, temperature outside warmer than normal — however she didn't know that, as jangmi had yet to step foot outside of the practice room since her arrival at 5 am.

she was exhausted, legs filled with static as her feet felt like they were on fire — she was sure the feeling wasn't because of the tightly-laced sneakers she had slid on earlier in the day. her breath suddenly grew more and more laboured as time passed, the song playing through the speakers throughout the practice room slowly blurring into a loud line of sound — the once beautifully mended chords and melodies brought together by countless sound engineers and technicians now the base of her horrendous headache.

perhaps she should've stopped to take a break five minutes prior, given the fact that her body knew it would be shutting down in less than ten minutes.. but she was stubborn. she felt as though her progress on this one, singular step was still faulty — that the groups' monthly evaluation score would be lower than expected solely because of her. she'd pushed herself to her edge, and this was her consequence.

jangmi felt her vision go white, the room spinning as her body fell limp to the hardwood floor, ankle twisting along the way. the song eventually stopped, but jangmi had no idea. she was out cold.

it'd quickly become a habit for the youngest to go around to her members' practice rooms when they had individual practice time, wanting to spend every possible moment with at least one of the girls – claiming she "missed their faces" every second she wasn't around them. the four found this endearing, always keeping their doors opened when they were assigned to the room beside jangmi's.

on this particular day, minjeong was assigned to the room beside hers. the older girl went on with her practice, finding the lack of footsteps in the other room... strange.

jangmi always paused the music when she took a break, and if she wasn't practicing, she'd be in the next room the moment the music paused. minjeong was concerned for the youngest, pausing her practice track to jog towards the other room's door. she knocked, pressing her ear to the barrier to make sure she wasn't just hearing things. once she was ensured there was no movement in the room, she opened the door, loudly gasping upon seeing the youngest sprawled out on the ground, torso hardly moving, indicating hardly any signs of her breathing.

"mini!" minjeong shouted in distress, rushing towards the unconscious girl. she gasped in shock, feeling the girl's shivering, drenched skin. she grabbed her phone out of her pocket, immediately dialing jimin.

jimin and aeri were quick to arrive to the room, their manager running quickly behind them. they'd all been in the same practice room, and began sprinting through the hallways once receiving minjeong's call.

the company's on-site medics were alerted, the medical staff immediately going to the practice room to help jangmi. she was placed on a stretcher, an oxygen mask placed around her face to try and bring some life back into her. aeri suddenly remembered sunghoon, digging through jangmi's practice bag to try and retrieve her cellphone. she typed in the password, immediately finding park's contact. she clicked the call number, letting it ring until the call disconnected by itself. he's probably busy.

the i-land contestants were two missions away from the final episode — debut was right under sunghoon's fingertips. perhaps he was feeling a little too confident, but that, unfortunately, didn't take away the copious amounts of stress the directors and instructors put on the remaining contestants. with this, came endless hours of rehearsal — in teams and individually. this also meant sunghoon got less time to contact jangmi, even if he was the trainee with the most liberty in that aspect, despite him having no idea why that was.

three hours into his individual practice of the day, there was a dark pit in the boy's stomach. perhaps it was the lack of nutrients he'd been getting the past few weeks, perhaps it was the drastic water intake to sweat ratio — he didn't know. all he knew was he needed to check on jangmi.

sunghoon went towards the producers, asking for his phone. "i know it's not the time, but i need to check on my friend. she's not well," having very limited knowledge on the soulmate tie, the directors immediately agreed to give park his cellphone, the boy disappearing into a closet as he turned it on for the first time that day. immediately the missed call from lee worried him, the boy's sleep-deprived mind immediately resorting to imagining the worst scenario possible.

sunghoon tried calling back, but to no avail. the boy unconsciously clicked on their location tracking app, and to his dismay, it showed jangmi was at the hospital. what the fuck?

park ran out of the secluded closet, going back towards the directors with a worried expression present on his features. "she's at the hospital. please, i need to go be with her."

aeri's fingers never stopped their comforting moves on jangmi's scalp, the older girl's body barely hanging on the edge of the narrow hospital bed, trying to bring her even an ounce of warmth.

just as the youngest's eyes began opening, the girls heard hurried footsteps on the other side of the privacy curtain. the four all looked up, seeing sunghoon's matted hair stuck to his forehead, his eyes reading an emotion even the most well-spoken of authors would spend an eternity attempting to dissect, evident even through his double masks.

looks of relief appeared on the girls' faces, jangmi opening her eyes wider in surprise. "where.. am i? unnie?" she looked at jimin, who pointed ahead of her. "look who came to see you, mini."

she slowly turned towards the room's enterance, seeing a blurry image of the most familiar specimen to her being.

"you came?"
"lee, what happened?"

𓆩♡𓆪
+ slowly progressing.. hopefully..