The quiet seat in the waiting room
For weeks Hongjoong only knows him as the quiet man who sits in the same corner of the hospital waiting room.
They exchange small smiles across the room, never speaking.
Until one day Hongjoong finally learns his name.
After that, nothing stays simple anymore.
Hongjoong should have already left.
His shift had run longer than planned, dragging into a late hour where the hospital stopped feeling busy and started feeling hollow. The corridors were quieter now, lights dimmed, doors half-closed, the kind of silence that only existed when everyone else had already gone home.
He was passing Room 117 when he stopped.
A sound came from inside the room; Seonghwa was throwing up.
Hongjoong froze immediately.
His hand lifted halfway toward the door out of instinct, like his body had already decided before his mind caught up. But he stopped himself.
Seonghwa’s face from earlier flashed in his mind again. The way he had looked at him. The way he had shut him out completely. The way he had made it very clear, more than once, that Hongjoong wasn’t supposed to cross that line.
Hongjoong stayed where he was.
The sounds continued for a few seconds inside the room -rough, strained, unmistakably painful- before slowly fading. Then there was silence.
Just stood there, staring at the door.
After a moment, a shaky breath broke through from inside. Then another. And then it shifted, collapsing into something broken. Seonghwa was crying.
Hongjoong’s chest tightened immediately. His hand lifted slightly again, like he was about to knock, about to enter anyway, about to ignore everything that had happened earlier.
He stayed still outside the room instead.
Listening to Seonghwa’s sobs.
Because for the first time that day, there was nothing cold or controlled left on the other side of that door.
Only Seonghwa, alone, crying where no one could see him.
And Hongjoong not allowed to step in.
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