𐙚₊˚ Chapter Fifteen: A Room Full of Regret ˚₊𐙚

✧ “They used to say silence meant peace. Now it only screamed.” ✧

The hallway was too white. Too bright.

None of the boys said anything as they followed the nurse down the corridor. Footsteps quiet. Heads low. Every sound felt loud — the beeping of machines, the soft scuff of shoes, the clicking of clipboards.

Youngjae clutched the plastic visitor’s pass a little too tightly.Hanjin walked with his hands shoved deep into his pockets.Dohoon kept swallowing, as if trying not to be sick.Jihoon didn’t even try to look calm.

And behind them…

Shinyu.

Face unreadable.Eyes distant.A man with a title — “father” — and no idea what to do with it anymore.

⋆₊˚⭒˚⟡˖ ࣪⋆

They reached the door.

Room 206.The nameplate was empty. Just a patient number.

Youngjae opened the door first.

And then the world stood still.

Kyungmin lay in the hospital bed, thinner than they remembered, skin pale, lips cracked. A bandage wrapped around his forehead. His arms were littered with bruises, small IV tubes running into them.

He looked like a stranger.

He looked like a ghost.

He looked like everything they had ignored for far too long.

The beeping of the heart monitor was steady, soft. The room smelled like antiseptic and sadness.

No one moved.

No one breathed.

Jihoon finally spoke. Barely a whisper.

“He looks… smaller.”

No one answered.

⋆˙⟡⭑⋆˖ ࣪

Dohoon stepped closer, his fingers brushing the edge of the bed rail.

“I thought he just wanted attention,” he said quietly. “I didn’t know he was disappearing.”

Hanjin sat down in the chair beside the bed. He didn’t touch Kyungmin. He just stared at him.

“He never even cried,” he muttered. “We said things that would’ve crushed anyone. And he just… took it.”

Youngjae stood by the window, his eyes shining with something dangerously close to tears.

“He waited for us. Every day. After practice. Outside the room. He watched us dance like we were stars.”

Silence.

Jihoon’s voice cracked.

"And we made him feel like dirt.”

No one argued.

Because it was true.

⋆₊˚⭒˚⟡˖ ࣪⋆

Shinyu didn’t move from the corner.

He stood there, arms crossed, back straight — but his eyes never left Kyungmin’s face.

The room was still for a long time.

Until finally… he spoke.

"He was five when their mother died.”

The brothers looked up.

Shinyu’s voice was quiet, tired.

"She used to say he was the only one who looked at her the way she wanted to be seen.”

He swallowed.

“After she died… I didn’t know how to look at him. He had her smile. Her eyes. I thought if I ignored it, it would hurt less.”

His voice broke.

“But it didn’t. I just hurt him instead.”

He stepped forward.Just a little.Enough to stand by the bed.

“I’m his father,” he whispered, as if he’d just remembered what that meant. “And I failed.”

The boys didn’t respond. They couldn’t.

Because they had all failed too.

⋆˚｡⋆

And Kyungmin?

He didn’t wake up.

Not yet.

But his fingers twitched once.

Like something inside him had heard them.

Like maybe — just maybe — the part of him that still wanted to believe…

was still holding on.