⋆˚｡ Chapter Seventeen: Almost ｡˚⋆

“He was almost gone. And they almost let him go.”

The hospital room was dim now.The curtains drawn. The lights off.Only the quiet rhythm of the heart monitor filled the space.

Kyungmin lay still.Breathing slow.Face pale beneath the gauze and tape.

He didn’t stir when the nurses came.Didn’t flinch when the IV was changed.Didn’t move when his brothers whispered his name.

He just… lay there.

Still stuck between dreams and memory.

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Youngjae sat closest to the bed, chin resting on his arms.

He watched the screen beside the bed blink gently in green.

65 bpm.

Alive. But not awake.

He exhaled slowly.

"He wanted so badly to belong here,” he whispered. “And we made him feel like a mistake.”

Dohoon sat on the couch against the wall, head in his hands.

“He was just a kid.”

"He still is,” Jihoon muttered, standing by the window.

“He was twelve,” Hanjin said hollowly, “and we treated him like he was nothing.”

No one answered.

Because the truth already said enough.

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Shinyu stood outside the room.

He hadn’t stepped inside all day.He couldn’t.

He stared through the glass.At his son.At the child he blamed. The child who looked so much like her.

And he thought of the last thing he ever said to him.

"Get out.”

“You're always causing trouble in this family.”

His throat burned.His chest ached.

And for the first time in a long time…Shinyu felt afraid.

Afraid that he had waited too long to change.Afraid that the apology in his chest might never be heard.

Afraid that the damage he caused…had done more than break the boy.

Maybe it had erased him.

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Inside, Youngjae reached into his pocket.

He pulled out something small — a folded piece of paper, once crumpled, now smoothed out.

A doodle.Drawn in pencil. Slightly smudged.

A sketch of all six of them — Kyungmin in the middle, smiling too brightly.

He remembered the day Kyungmin gave it to him.

“I drew this! I made your eyes extra cool!”

He had laughed.Then thrown it in his drawer.Forgotten it for months.

Now he looked at it like it was made of glass.

"You were never the burden,” he whispered. “We were.”

⋆˚｡⋆

That night, none of them slept.

They sat beside the boy they ignored.The boy they left behind.

They listened to the machines.Watched the rise and fall of his chest.

And waited for a miracle.

For him to move.To blink.To speak.

Something.

Anything.

Because even though they were here now —the truth was clear.

They almost lost him.

And worse…

They almost let it happen.