The world felt muffled around Suho. As if someone had pressed a heavy cushion to his ears. But the voices… the voices still pierced through.
"Hyunwoo confessed that Hauen planned everything."
"She told him she would hurt Suho again and again, then heal him… just to stay close to him."
"She was jealous. She wanted to separate Yerin from you. So she planned your accident."
A slow crack spread through Suho's subconscious, thin as a hairline fracture in ice.
And then her voice, bright, warm, the one he cherished even when he pretended he didn't,
"Somebody, please help! My husband is bleeding… please save my husband…"
His fingers twitched.
"I love you, Teddy… I'll never leave you, no matter what…"
"Teddy, did you do your leg stretches?"
His chest rose sharply.
"I'm your wife legally, Mr. Kim."
"Do I look like a nurse to you?"
"Love me the way you want, Teddy. Just don't hurt yourself."
"I did not want to become poison between you and Yerin."
"I dared to love you even when I had no chance of having you. And now that I finally have you…, you think I'll let something like this take you from me?"
"If you don't smile now, I'll make you run a marathon tomorrow morning, for real, and you might regret confessing to me."
"Love you, Husband!"
Each memory slammed into him, violent waves crashing over a fragile shore. His fingers twitched. His breath staggered. His pulse spiked, wild and chaotic. The ventilator shrieked its distress. Inside his fractured mind, he screamed.
No… no… not my Hauen. She is my angel. My softness. My shield. She loves me. She held me when my bones remembered pain. She stitched me back into a person.
She can't be the villain… she can't.
His body jerked as if his soul was ripping from its place. Sweat coated his temples. His jaw clenched until it trembled. Tears slipped beneath closed lashes, as memories clashed with the ugly truths thrown at him. Every smile. Every whisper. Every touch he once believed in. Every moment he thought was love.
No. No… no.
His pulse spiked. The ventilator beeped erratically, the sound slicing through the room.
"No… my Hauenie can't do that… don't take her…" His voice was hoarse, collapsing on itself. "She loves me… she loves me so much no matter what... leave my wife… please…"
His heartbeat thrashed, "She is my peace… she is my home… Don't take her. Don't take my Hauenie…" his voice cracked, rising into a desperate cry. "She's innocent… you're lying… you're falsely accusing her… leave her… leave my wife!"
His body jolted hard this time, chest tightening painfully. Yuna and Dahyun, who had been sitting nearby, stood up instantly, fear flashing across their face as they rushed to him.
"Suho!" Dahyun whispered, reaching for the emergency button... "Suho…" Yuna's voice cracked as panic clawed up her throat. She shot to her feet, hands trembling. "Doctor! Doctor, please! Suho!"
Her scream sliced through the quiet hospital corridor. Within seconds, the medical team rushed in. The doctor slid to Suho's side, checking his vitals, his pulse, the wild rise and fall of his chest.
Suho's body jerked violently, as if his subconscious was fighting a war his conscious mind was too shattered to join. His fingers twitched, knees stiffening, breath catching in broken bursts.
"His pulse is erratic," one nurse murmured.
"Prepare the sedative," the doctor ordered quickly. The needle slid into his arm, the medicine flowing like a slow hush into his veins. Little by little, the tremors eased. His muscles loosened. His breaths steadied.
And then, almost childlike, almost a whisper torn from the ruins of his heart: "My Hauenie… is innocent… she loves me so much…"
The words barely left his lips before his body finally went still. Silence swallowed the room.
Yuna covered her mouth. Dahyun's eyes were burning, watching him sink into unconsciousness again, so quiet, so breakable, it felt wrong to breathe near him.
Twelve hours had already passed since he was admitted. Twelve hours of slipping in and out of fevered panic, nightmares, and fragments of memories that stabbed deeper than any wound.
The doctor stepped aside gently, lowering his voice but failing to mask the heaviness.
"His condition is critical. The shock pushed him beyond his emotional threshold. After the previous accident, he had become emotionally dependent on Hauen, too attached, too vulnerable. Any blow involving her could shatter him." He paused, glancing at Suho's pale, exhausted face. "People like him… they cling hard. And when the person they trust breaks… the mind collapses before the body does."
Dahyun's breath shook. She looked at Suho, this man who had survived physical pain, surgeries, and trauma… yet was now crumbling under the weight of love twisted into betrayal.
"He's not able to accept anything bad about her," the doctor continued softly. "To him… she's not just a wife. She's his anchor. Removing that belief… is like tearing open an old wound."
The monitor beeped steadily now, but every sound felt fragile… as if the smallest truth could shatter him again. And no one knew what would happen when he woke.
The atmosphere around the hospital felt like a dim hallway where every footstep echoed too loudly. Yuna and Daehyun moved around Suho's room with the quiet precision of people afraid to break something already fragile. They wiped his face, adjusted his blanket, whispered his name as if it might coax his soul back into the room.
Daehyun sat beside him, brushing stray hair from his forehead every few minutes, her throat aching from crying. Yuna stayed outside.
Haraboji had collapsed last night. Whatever he heard, contract marriage, hidden past incidents, Murder attempts, accusations, it crushed something inside him. His old heart wasn't built for this kind of betrayal. He once believed his family was peaceful, stable, and warm. Now it felt like he'd been living in a house made of smoke.
Inside another part of the hospital, Mr. Kim, Suho's father, and Minho were trapped in a different kind of battlefield. Minho's father was out of the station. Mr. Kim was alone, dealing with the media storm.
The scandal had detonated overnight, and Korea was feeding on every scrap of it. Headlines were multiplying like sparks in dry grass. People were inventing new angles, twisting facts, spinning outrage. Every channel flashed Hauen's name as if she were the villain of a drama they'd been starving for.
And the Kang family, those once-respected figures, were being torn apart. Protestors camped around their house, throwing insults sharp enough to crack windows. Threats, posters, chants. The streets outside their gate were a riot of anger. Mr. and Mrs. Kang hadn't stepped out even to breathe fresh air. They were cornered, helpless, and already halfway broken.
Meanwhile, the silence from the Kim family said enough. Their lack of defense, their withdrawal from all communication, everyone took it as a sign of betrayal, confirmation that the accusations were true. And the Kang family felt that quiet like a knife twisting.
Hauen remained in custody, not aware of what was happening in the outside world... Her bail was rejected. The charges were too heavy, the evidence too tight around her neck. Hyunwoo was locked inside the same station.
And in the middle of all that noise, the center of the whole calamity… Suho lay still.
His condition hadn't improved. The doctors repeated the same words: shock, emotional trauma, destabilized mental state. After the accident, he'd become too dependent on Hauen, too fragile emotionally, too ready to believe she was the only safe thing left in his world. The sudden destruction of that belief had pushed his mind into a place it didn't know how to return from.
For the Kim family, nothing mattered now except the rise and fall of Suho's breath. Everything else, the media, the accusations, the public chaos, felt small compared to the sight of him lying unmoving on a hospital bed.
No one knew what tomorrow looked like. And for the first time in years, the Kim mansion and the Kang house both felt like houses waiting for something terrible or miraculous to happen.
Tomorrow is Sunday. Monday, the police will take Hauen and Hyunwoo to court. Will the truth surface? Will the chaos deepen? Or will the story twist in a way no one expects?
Because sometimes… the glitter people hate turns out to be real gold. And sometimes… the darkness everyone believes is truth collapses into dust the moment light hits it.
For now, the night held its breath. Waiting.