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yoongiment · 7 years ago

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miracle (jeongguk)

summary: "you were my miracle."

contents: ANGST, set in the future, illness, that’s all i’ll say heueuehue

word count: appx. 10k

a/n: wow it's been a minute since i posted a fic!!! this is comprised of many middle-of-the-night writing sprees and it is uhhh real sad. i have class in the morning and it's like midnight so i'll stop talking but yes thank u pls enjoy and leave feedback in my inbox if you'd like

It was a battle of finding tranquility within the depths of dread that plagued the seasons you found yourself drifting through. It was an eternal autumn, a constant shadow of death contaminating a forest with no exit; the winds of change only bringing forth the remnants of the departed life, swirling around you and clouding your vision with a majestic sight of fallen creation.

The brick pathway was coated in the stuff, leaving you wading through a sea of dead leaves, once golden turned brown under the deathly hands of Mother Nature. You gazed up at the sky, misty behind the spindly branches of the naked trees. It was going to rain soon.

The receptionist was no longer the old woman who had smelled his sweat and vomit far too many times and who had sent you bouquets of colors so strong they could almost breathe life back him. The man behind the desk now looked far too brawny to be sitting there, too handsome and young to be surrounded by so much illness, so much death. He sent you a smile, which you did not return, and then sent you on your way down the familiar white halls, fluorescent lights never bright enough to shine on the darkness of the other side of existence.

You thought of nothing, listening to the clack of your heels against the linoleum floors that had seas of blood, piss, shit, vomit, mopped away with the stinging scent of disinfectant and the tears of the mourning. You did not think of the way he used to smell, the creak of wheelchairs against that same floor. You thought of nothing at all, but also everything of him.

You paused for a moment, standing before the room he had been assigned. The sunlight, red like blood, poured in through the windows that were stained with rain droplets that were once there. You looked at the way it changed the color of your shoes before exhaling and turning into the room.

He, too, was gazing out towards the bloody sun, watching the leaves fall onto that brick pathway and the children of the ill dash through the piles. He turned to see who was at the door, slowly, as if the joints and muscle in his neck were made of bolted robotic parts. His eyes widened to saucers at the sight of you in the doorway; he sat up quickly, eyes reflexively squeezing shut at the sensation. He forced them open and blinked hard, in disbelief of what had made its way in front of him. He always felt like vomiting, especially now from the speed at which he sat up, but now even more so from the unbelievable sight, now at the foot of his bed.

There was a moment of silence, nothing in the room to be heard but his short breaths and heart that was working much too hard yet not efficiently enough. You wondered if this was a beam of tranquility to rest under in the midst of the dread that surrounded you.

“What the fuck are you doing here?”

His tone was venomous as his shaking fingers reached for the plastic-covered remote to call the nurse, the doctor, fucking anyone. He rested on the emergency button and narrowed his eyes at you, daring you to speak.

“Shouldn’t I be the one asking you why the fuck you’re here?”

You matched his lethal tone, speaking in hushed words and wringing your hands with the thin white metal of his bed frame. The length of the bed separated the two of you, yet you stood acres apart, disconnected and partitioned by the ashes of a dead forest.

A dead forest, once filled with lush trees that kissed the sky, brimming with life and the essence of fate, now burned into mountains of ash and charred trunks, infertile soil bearing no sort of continuation of anything.

You towered over his hunched figure and pushed away any thought of him, any memory or pitiful image to stir your withered heart. You stood over a sick man, but the sick man was him and you were you. This was not an unfamiliar sight in your eyes.

“Isn’t it obvious? Why did you come here? How did you even know?” His eyes, glazed over from years of frustration and heartache, held roots of sorrow and fatigue. He was angry, fists clenched tight and shaking like leaves, but the sight of you also brought forth memories of pain worse than dying, fate shaken and crumbling at touch.

“Your mother.” You cross your arms and match his expression of flamed resentment and hidden woe. He huffs, leaning back and discreetly catching his breath.

“...What did she tell you?” His fiery front melts into the sad mug of a child, eyes searching for small details of your figure, anywhere but your eyes, his thumbs twiddling. You take a moment to inspect his face and take in the severity of what had caused him so much pain for so many years of his life, his childhood. He was ill, yet again, another flare up of something or other - Jeonggukie was sick, and it showed. You couldn’t tell if he had aged much in the time you’d been apart, the sickness cloaking any bit of youth he may have had left. Your harsh eyes inspected the circles shading his, the hollow of his cheeks and the ghastly image of such a skinny neck holding his head. This was the boy you loved so many years ago, plagued with illness before and damned again with it now. This was the boy you loved, chained to a hospital bed and dizzy enough to vomit even when he laid still. This was the boy you loved, or rather, what was left of him.

“You’re dying.”

He looks into your eyes, so broken, so weary of living as a bag of bones and so damaged in the wake of the storm that you brought over him all that time ago. You imagined that he would look at you with the same misery had he not fallen ill again. In the corner of your eye, a leaf stirs and floats down from its home in the branches, and you grimace at the parallel image of feelings stirring inside of your own heart. You hold your cold gaze to him, your past lover, past life, unwavering and filled with words unsaid.

“And what’s it to you?” His words are cold, full of disdain, and they shoot right against the crystalline surface of your own self. You are a bit taken aback at his ruthlessness and an icy silence settles between you. “What do you think this is? Your chance to get rid of your guilt before you can’t anymore?” Your jaw clenches and you look away from him for a second. “I’m dying,” he says your name and the sound from his tongue is alien after so long and with so much distaste behind it. “And I would rather do a lot more with what little time I have left than hear you get shit off your chest when you couldn’t care less about me. If you wanted to make amends, then you would’ve done it when I wasn’t in this fucking hospital. Okay?”

His eyes are filled with unshed tears, and yours stare at him with annoyance. He looks away, instead focusing on the flowers on the desk beside him. The leaves stirred again when you realized that those were your favorite.

“Are you done?” Your voice doesn’t waver. You speak with the level-headedness of the adult you’ve become, void of emotion and patience running thin. He stays silent, now picking at the skin of his thumbs. “Who do you think I am?” Your voice is hushed, not even louder than the beeps of the machines Jeongguk is hooked up to. “Do you...do you think I haven’t been hurting too? That I haven’t...been alone? Lost? You’re not my fucking charity case because I’m not guilty. I’m fucking sad!” Your eyes begin to burn and he looks at you with his sad eyes and his thin face and beanie that’s too big for his head. “I’m sad that we fucked it all up and wasted everything and spent years apart when you were doing okay when we could’ve...done something! Anything! We could’ve been anything but we were so, so fucking stupid.”

“If I wasn’t sick, then you wouldn’t have wanted anything to do with me. That’s what already happened because we’re not meant to be like that. You’re acting like we didn’t break up for a fucking reason.” The heels of his palms massage his temples. You refuse to cry first.

“What was the reason, then? You broke up with me, you fucking idiot. Tell me the reason again. Tell me the reason again and I’ll fucking dare you to tell me that I don’t deserve to be fucked up over this.”

He says nothing for a long moment, still just staring into you. “I was twenty-three. I shouldn’t have even made it that long,” he mumbled darkly. “You knew I didn’t have much time left. You knew how fucking depressed I was, and you still left.” He grimaces, and you recognize the familiar sight of him preparing to vomit.

“I left because you told me to.” You are next to him now, sitting in the chair by his bed and looking up at him. He is going to cry and you know this. He is going to throw up now, and you know this too. You could’ve had your eyes closed in another room and you would have known this.

You grab the metal bowl on his bedside table and hand it to him. He grips it with white knuckles and tears hit the surface with a soft ping. “You left because I told you to.” More tears fell into the bowl before a cough from Jeongguk sent a wave of sick and a bit of blood after it. He sniffles and you hesitate to reach out, ultimately placing your hand beside his on the bed. “I didn’t want you to see me die. I didn’t want you to see me so sick. I knew it was gonna happen, but I didn’t think it’d happen years later.” His tone is full of remorse, like a child who had broken something. He stares into the bowl of his own sick, releasing more tears and dry-heaving a bit.

The room is quiet again, Jeongguk crying silently and you watching him. In a rush of boldness, you reach your hand to rest on his forearm, so thin and unreasonably warm.

“You think I would’ve just laid there and traumatized you? I had a dead man’s wishes. I didn’t want to hurt you.” You intertwine your fingers with his now and he doesn’t stop you. “We loved each other so much. You would have died too, if you saw me like that. I gave you a head start on life without me.” You sniffle now, and his head creaks over to where you are sitting below him. Your own big tears are swiped away by your hand and patter onto the blankets covering him. His brow is furrowed at the sight, heart clenching because he knows that you are the stronger between the two of you. “Because I loved you.”

He sets aside the bowl and lays down again, keeping you in his line of vision. You whimpered, placing a hand over your forehead in despair.

“But what do I have to be sorry about?” You cried and he runs a hand through your hair, an action that hadn’t occurred since you were a young girl. You were a woman now, an adult, while Jeongguk was laying in his deathbed, a familiar resting ground, decades too early. You couldn’t decipher whether he resembled a small child or an elderly man - what a strange sight it was to see such a young person plagued with death. He rests his hand back onto the bed, worn from the simple action of touching you.

“You...you were respecting my wishes. You have nothing to be sorry about. I’m sorry.” You reach out and cup his cheek, wiping away the thin tears and taking in the feeling of his skin and bones. “You have nothing to be sorry for, but I’m still mad. I’m so mad,” he sobs.

You grab his hand and kiss the back of it, shushing him and moving to rub his back so he can catch his breath. “Calm down, calm down. Stop crying.” You chuckle through your tears and his look of anguish doesn’t let up.

“I’m mad. I’m mad at you for leaving when I told you to. When it got bad, the worst, my mother and father and Junghyun never left my side. They were always there with me, but it was so lonely. It felt so lonely because you weren’t there.” He is bawling and you are standing over him, running a hand up and down his spine and trying to ignore the feeling of how greatly his bones protrude from his skin. “I told you to leave, but you shouldn’t have. But you did what I told you to do and it was all my fault and I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.” He cries so much that his pillow looks like a storm came through the windows. You grab the bowl again and place it next to his resting head. He coughs into it, spitting and mewling and you grab a tissue from the bedside table and wipe his face.

Your breathing is heavy and uneven in your attempts to keep it together. If Jeongguk saw you cry the way your heart was telling you, he would surely need more than a doctor to help him.

“Don’t be. Don’t be sorry, baby. I’m here now.” Tears fell from your eyes softly; if Jeongguk’s crying was a thunderstorm, yours was a light haze of fog. You adjusted his beanie and smiled sadly at him, always the most sensitive boy. His crying calmed, now just a steady stream of tears and hiccups as opposed to the sobbing that had him gasping for air and you reaching for his emergency button. He was tired when you came in, and now he was completely exhausted. His eyes closed and you continued to wipe his face, your other hand rubbing his back and attempting to alleviate his ragged breaths. “We can only make good of what we have now. There’s no going back. So don’t worry about it.” He grabbed your wrist weakly and brought your hand to his running nose, blowing harshly into the wet tissue. You protested in disgust, wondering aloud how such a sick person could blow their nose to such a calibre. His eyes stayed closed and for the first time in so many years, you were witness to his smile.

Silence fills the room again and the gray skies begin to grow darker. “Is it raining?” He asks, voice heavy with weariness.

“No, not yet. Tonight it will.” You run your hand over his head, picking pieces of lint from his knit hat. He hums and grabs onto your hand again, placing it under his cheek against his pillow, damp with tears. The beeps of his machines keep on through your visit and you don’t have the heart to look over and attempt to decipher what they were there for. There was so much more going on from the first time he had faced death; so many more machines, so much more weakness. There was so much going awry with his body and you immediately pushed the thought away and the echoing of his mother’s words when she had called you in tears only a week ago. Jeongguk was dying again. He had cheated death and it caught up to him now. He was dying, and you hadn’t seen him in years. The proof was shown before you now and the weight of it was pushing onto you. Your other hand still moved back and forth across his back, over his shoulders and arms. Goosebumps deepened at your touch, the feeling that had left so long ago.

“Jeongguk-ah. What do you think would have happened if I didn’t leave four years ago?” You can’t help yourself from muttering the question to him, tone hushed and private from the rest of the world.

“I would’ve married you. Had kids.” He pauses, opening his eyes into slits and staring out at the dead leaves. “But we didn’t.”

You said nothing, instead leaning your head against your arm over his bed frame. His hand grabbed yours and you sat, looking into each other’s eyes and picturing the life that was swept away with the drip of his IV and the mopping of disinfectant. You were so young then, even so now. You dared conjure the thought of what may have been happening today had you not left his side before. Perhaps you’d have life in your womb, blossoming like the flowers rooted in your hypothetical garden in a house that existed only in your dreams; perhaps living a life of love on his borrowed time would have yielded so much more; perhaps he would not have gotten sick again; perhaps he would not have to die.

“You know better than anyone that miracles can happen.” You spoke with trepidation, not wanting to instill any false hope, but doing so anyways because it tainted your heart, slipped its way into your lungs and bloodstream and you felt it - you felt that there was still a chance. A small bit of hope that you had clung onto for so many years. He sighs.

“I already had my miracle.”

A knock on the metal doorway sounds and Jeongguk’s grip on your hand tightens when you perk up. A nurse smiles at you and you nod your head in understanding. Jeongguk kisses your palm that rests under his cheek and you run a hand along his shoulder once more before gathering your purse.

“Will you be back?” He looks to you with his wide eyes and you stare back.

“Yes.”

The storm begins later that night and the streets fill quickly with dirtied rainwater from the fallen leaves. The lights of the city sparkle in the water and dance with the pounding of the unending rainfall. A harsh tone of lightning fills your room with white light and you lay in bed wondering if Jeongguk was awake. You wondered if he was kept up with illness or if he had his music at full volume to drown the thunder outside his window. You wondered if he felt lonely and if he wanted to see you again. You pushed the thoughts away, sighing at the resounding ache in your chest.

“Bundle up. What if you catch pneumonia?” You wrapped a second scarf around his chin and he whined in protest. You pulled the knit beanie adorning his head a hair further down, covering his eyebrows which were furrowed in annoyance. He pulls down the two scarves and face mask and you gasp.

“Don’t worry so much, baby. I’m wearing four layers of shirts!” You glare at him, pulling the mask and scarves back over his mouth.

“Do you want a fifth one?”

He groans and kisses your head through the thick protection covering his face. He grabs your hand with his mittened one and all but drags you out of his house - holding your breath and tip-toeing as to not make even an inkling of a sound. He opens the door for you at a snail’s pace, every movement in slow motion. His eyes squeeze shut as he meticulously closes and locks the door, silently praying that his mother doesn’t wake up. When he finishes, you are already across the front yard, hand extended to him.

He waddles over to you, unable to walk properly with the amount of clothing you forced him to wear. It’s a night in February, stars gleaming for the two of you. You had just graduated high school the week before and Jeongguk begged you to take him to celebrate someplace other than the confines of his own bedroom. Your heart pounded quickly, constantly anxious of him and his shoddy immune system and constantly nervous of the striking presence of such a striking person.

You were eighteen years old, preparing to begin attending university and tasting the fruits of life; so young, still budding and lacking compared to many your age. You were so unsure of so many things, so hesitant; especially when it came to Jeongguk and his health. He filled the spaces of life with a body that didn’t function half as well as it should. He was beautiful, underweight and sickly-looking and even haggard at times - he reminded you of every season, each part of him making up a lifetime of changing winds and magnificent nature. Even at the age of eighteen, he was so sick, often bedridden and unable to partake in so much a boy his age must do. The fear and weight of it all struck you often, but your best friend had always grabbed your hand and held it, even from the confines of a hospital bed. You were afraid of him, not only from the scary encounters he often had with death, but also from how much you loved him.

“If you get worse from doing this, I’ll kill you myself.” You continued down the streets of bleak suburbia and his eyes twinkled. He swung your hands back and forth at an alarmingly rapid rate.

“Ah, dear. I’d let you kill me anytime.” You couldn’t see through the layers over his mouth, but he was smiling like an idiot and the contagious grin spread to your own face. He kissed your forehead, once, twice, again through the cloth. “How much farther?”

“Not long. And once we see it, we need to head straight back, okay?” You sighed anxiously, squeezing his hand at the thought of his mother’s outrage if she were to notice he’d left the house. He groaned at the night sky and the stars that fell over the two of you.

“Yes, yes, we’ll make it back. No one will ever know.”

“Except for us.” At that, he kisses you again.

It was not a far walk to your destination, but traveling through the woods at twilight had you and Jeongguk clinging to each other a bit tighter. He took a break twelve minutes from leaving his house, perching himself on a rock and positioning you between his legs. You attempted to pull his hat farther past his eyebrows as he cocked his head like an owl and observed the forest with wide eyes.

“It’s pretty,” he giggled. You smiled and ran a thumb across his cheekbone before grabbing his hands to pull him up and keep moving.

“We need to go fast. We’re gonna miss it.”

You reached your destination soon after to the tune of his slightly labored breathing and the snapping of twigs and leaves beneath his shaking legs. He let out a soft gasp at the sight before him and halted his breathing for a short moment. You kept your eyes locked on him instead and allowed him to grip your hand with even more of an iron fervor. The world had fallen silent; the sounds of the highway and busy city streets were far away from the refuge of the woods, and it seemed that even the birds in the trees had silenced themselves in the presence of you and Jeongguk. It was almost as if the world was bowing to you two, a gesture of respect to the boy who had already spoken to death before he was eighteen and to you, the girl who loved him.

You had taken him to the edge of the forest, a cleared spot looking over what was Jeongguk’s entire small world. From here, he could see the glass buildings of downtown and the glass windows of quiet suburbia, as well as the new world of the trees he had entered only that day. You stood together with intertwined hands over the tall cliff, the sun rising before you as if it moved for just your eyes, the eyes of lovers, to see.

His eyes were filled with childlike amazement, dazzled at the sight of his first sunrise. The orange hue engulfed him, casting warmth and light onto his frail body. In this moment, Jeongguk was more than the sickness that plagued his body through his entire life; he was unsure what he was at this time of being eye-level with the glow of the sunlight, but he knew that he had become so much more. His eyes began to fill with tears at this realization, bottom lip quivering at the thought of mere existence, the gratitude of owning something greater than hospital stays and toxic blood. The first tear falls with a soft “I love you,” Jeongguk’s weak heart swelling for you, you who had been the unwavering presence of the sun. It had been you, always, who lifted him and made him believe that he was simply so much more.

He sniffs and turns his face away from you, the fabric of his mittened free hand absorbing the fallen tears. He laughs bashfully when you try to walk around him and hold his face.

“You big baby,” you murmur endearingly, wiping his eyes with your own scarf. He lets out a choked chuckle and stares at you, taking in what was likely the only time he’d see you in this position, radiant in the heat of the rising sun. You did the same, fixing your eyes on every pore, every eyelash, all the minutia and the beauty he held.

“You look beautiful.” The whispered breath carries in the nip of the February winds and caresses your senses. You sigh softly and run a hand over the top of his covered head.

“You too.”

He pulls his face mask and scarves down past his chin and leans in to kiss you, for real this time. Your mind stutters at the contact, nervous at both the potential of unintentionally attacking his vulnerable immune system and at the raging butterflies that beat against your torso, fluttering about and flushing your cheeks. Your conscious warns you to stop, be careful to not get him even more sick and to get him back to the cage of blankets in his bedroom where he spent so many of his days. You gasp with his lips attached to yours as your body reacted to the overwhelming sensation of Jeongguk and he immediately presses his lips to yours again without a beat of hesitation. His hand grips yours even tighter and you let him kiss you, slow and sweet and in the illumination of his first sunrise.

You hadn’t watered the memory in years, instead letting it wither in the backwoods of your mind along with many other dreams of him that now seemed as though they were from a different life. The memory crossed your mind during the storm that night and again the next week when you walked along the brick pathway to him. The rain hadn’t let up in the days that passed and it filled the world with a constant gray tone and the scent of wet asphalt. Your umbrella drips onto the linoleum of his hospital floor and your heeled shoes leave a strange print of water behind you. His eyes trail over to you sluggishly and he stares at you, saying nothing.

“Hello.” You voice echoes in the silence of the room, save for the beeps of the machines and the light rain falling against the glass window. His lips purse a bit and he turns his head again, looking back through the glass towards the brick pathway to the hospital entrance and the naked trees that border it. You sigh softly through your nose and make your way back to the chair beside his bed, blocking his vision of the window. “How are you?”

He purses his lips again and he looks alarmingly like a rabbit. He scowls, keeping his eyes focused on the world beyond the glass.

“Why are you here again?” His brows are furrowed and he still does not spare you another glance. You glare at him, clearly irritated with his unadulterated hostility.

“To see you. We went over this last time.” You match his icy tone and he continues to pout, not looking around the bleak hospital room. He says nothing and you huff. “So? How are you?” He even goes so far to cross his arms and your heart thumps, reminded of your teenage days spent alleviating his anger of falling ill.

He sighs. “Sick.” His voice is raspy and his face is covered with a layer of grease that can easily be traced back to an unhealthy sweat he must have broken into earlier. Your hands rest on the metal frame of his bed.

“Sorry.” He hums in response and continues to avoid your eyes. Silence fills the room for a pregnant moment before you hesitatingly speak again. “Maybe, should we...talk or something?” Despite being in your late twenties, the weight of seeing Jeongguk again after such a long period of time turned you into the stuttering teenager you had left behind with your life with him. He rotates his head against his pillow to face your direction, still not looking directly at you. Perhaps you also made Jeongguk feel like he was fifteen again in the presence of a pretty girl.

“About what?”

“I don’t know.”

He doesn’t respond once again and all that is heard is the constant chatter of the machines. You sigh and sit up straighter.

“About us,” you mutter softly. Jeongguk looks up at the ceiling now with a blank look of neutrality.

“Well, what is it you want to say?” His eyes finally flick over to you and he looks curious and almost defensive. You stare back at him, mouth slightly agape. You are drawing a blank and hurt begins to blossom in your chest for seemingly no reason.

“I-I don’t really know. I don’t know.” Your tone is worlds different from the cold voice you had used not one minute ago and so much the previous week. “What do you need to say?”

His lip twitches again. “I told you before.” Your form breaks slightly and you drop your eyes in sadness, having refrained from showing the emotion for so long.

“Then tell me again.” His brows furrow in annoyance with a sigh.

“You know what happened. Just because I’m sick doesn’t mean we were meant to be together. Doesn’t mean that we’re good together, or that we’re soulmates or tragic lovers or whatever.” He pauses, breaking eye contact with you again and focusing on the woven threads of the cheap hospital blanket. “Just…whatever.”

You shift in your seat to face him even more. You stare at him harshly and stop yourself from grabbing his face so he would just fucking look at you.

Your voice becomes quieter, laced with more sadness. “You loved me.”

He does not look at you. He begins to speak again, but you cut him off. “You did. And I loved you too. I loved you with everything I was and you fucking know it. So let me be with you for these last few times, okay? Can I at least have that?”

He looks at you now, his own buried sadness lining his eyes. He used to look at you with so much love. “You’re here now, aren’t you?” Neither of your faces moved from the frowns that adorned them, but your hands still moved towards each other’s. He intertwines your fingers and you rest your other hand atop his. You remain silent for a moment, momentarily ignoring the looming feeling of his limited time and instead sitting in the tranquil presence of a distant dream brought into existence.

“So what now?” You whisper, looking at him with concern as you’ve always done. His lip twitches and your own lips morph into a sad, small smile.

“Do you remember when you would come home from school?” His voice is small and sad but he smiles when he speaks.

“When you would be waiting at the door?” You laugh and Jeongguk’s heart quickens. “I got used to opening the door slowly so I wouldn’t hit your wheels.” You smile at him and he looks back to you with endearment.

“Do you remember my drawings?” His ears flush red as he tries not to look too hopeful. Your chest caves a bit at the memory of sitting beside him next to the window of your loft and watching in awe as he sketched every detail of you without looking up from the paper. Years later, you had found yourself sitting beside him by a window once again, now overlooking the red bricks covered in dead leaves and holding his hands that ached too much to pick up a charcoal pencil.

“Of course I do,” you whisper. He opens his mouth and you interrupt him again. “They’re under my bed.” He looks to you and smiles sadly once again, fingers curling slightly around yours.

“I haven’t drawn since.” The silence becomes thick and awkward and you run your thumb along his bony knuckles. “I don’t know, I just...was thinking about it, I guess. I miss it.”

“That’s okay.” He turns his head away from you and picks at his blankets with his free hand.

“Maybe I…I don’t know, maybe I could try. Drawing, try again.” He speaks slowly and with hesitation, like a teenage boy. There are many questions you have from this, many words unspoken and dissolving on your tongue. Was it rude to ask why he was thinking of those days? The times you shared in your studio apartment years ago and the sketches that were now collecting dust? Wordlessly, you slowly reached into your bag and pushed aside irrelevant documents and trinkets to pull out the palm-sized notebook you used for groceries and a pen that you hoped still had ink in it. You placed them in his hands and he looked at you with his sad eyes. He chuckles breathily and clicks the pen a few times before holding it still against the paper as he pursed his lips in thought. As graceful as the dancer he was never able to become, he lifted the pad to his face and began to create once again, just as if he had never stopped.

Sadness tinges your heart as you watch him complete the mundane activity that morphed into a treasured tradition with the years that passed. You wondered how the scene would play had you not left before; if he would still be in this hospital bed, beads of sweat running down his pale face as he concentrated on his work, sick as a dog but pulling through during your visits. A picture of a child on your hip visiting him with you flashed across your mind and you had to look away from him for a brief second, the pain of the thought too uncomfortable.

His hand stops moving across the paper and he stares at it with a sort of reverence. You can’t yet see what he had drawn, but the sad grin on his face had a small ember of hope drifting through your chest. He looks to you and sighs softly before turning the notepad and presenting his creation to you.

The ember in your heart sparks and catches fire. Your eyes widen and you stiffen, unsure of what to do and how to react.

Just as he had always done, without lifting his eyes from the paper, Jeongguk had created a detailed carbon copy of you using only a ballpoint pen on dollar store lined paper. It was like looking into a mirror, literally, but also into a different world - a world that you had left behind when you were a young woman, a world that burned with flames so bright they almost turned the whole place to ash. It was looking into Jeongguk’s world, the one that he told you years ago he didn’t want you in.

A light blush paints the tip of his ears and he rests back against his pillow, flipping the notebook closed.

“Sorry,” he mumbles. You move quickly to place your hands on his and the notebook.

“I love it. Thank you, Jeongguk.” His eyes, still doe-like well into adulthood, widen and he nods shortly. He hums a bit.

“You were always the best thing I could draw,” he mumbled shyly, using both hands to place the notepad into yours. You huff softly in a bit of disbelief that he was still so similar to the boy you loved when you were a young girl.

The two of you held hands for a bit and like before, a nurse strolling by gave a knock on the door as a wordless reminder that you needed to leave soon. You said a quick goodbye, curt and polite and Jeongguk hummed back to you with his eyes closed.

“I’ll be back - sometime, or, I - yeah,” you fumbled over your words and the last thing you saw before fumbling out of the room was a small smile from Jeongguk.

You cried in your car while the heavy storm filled the hospital parking lot. The rain beat furiously against your windshield as you sobbed with no sign of stopping. You clutched the small notepad with an iron grip and rested your forehead against the steering wheel, yelling and screaming and grieving. The weight of Jeongguk’s presence after his absence and the impending absence of his death weighed down upon you and you found yourself in hysterics over a picture he drew. You beat your hands against the wheel and cried, inconsolable and humiliated at the fact.

After a few long moments of bashing your hands against the steering wheel and dashboard, your cries hushed and you drew your arms around yourself, pulling yourself together and making yourself even smaller in this big, cruel world. You continued to blubber a bit, shutting your eyes at the pain of the memories of Jeongguk.

You thought of those days you discussed with him only minutes earlier - the days of lounging in your small loft together, hidden away from the world and filled with quiet embraces and charcoal sketches. You thought of being in love quietly, grasping fleeting moments of romance and cherishing what you had in light of Jeongguk’s poor health. You thought of the arguments, the awkward silences, the break-up and the regret of it all, clouding your mind and polluting the air.

He broke up with you on a day much like this day of thundering showers that rained sideways and with an angry force. The sound of it filled the apartment along with the soft hum of the television, some B-list anime that you’d both seen before streaming out into the atmosphere. You had come home from school or work or whatever it was to find him with his head against the couch cushions, resting himself without any other pillows or support. You scolded him softly as soon as you walked through the front door, lifting his head gently and placing a tacky throw pillow under it. His gaze remained blank and in the general direction of the TV, but you both knew that he paid no mind to it, or anything for that matter.

He had been like this more often than not lately - keeping silent and still, not looking at his sketchbook or you or anything. You even found yourself crying hushedly in your shared bathroom after a recent episode of especially cold distance. He was eating even less than before and barely bothering to do much else besides lounge in bed or on the couch. There was something deeply, irrevocably wrong with Jeongguk and you both knew exactly what had shifted within him.

Jeongguk was dying. He had spent his entire life dying, but felt the dreadful looming in his twenty-third year then more than ever before. His body shut down more, the progression of decay showing in his loss of mobility, control of various systems in his body, deterioration of his spirit and livelihood, et cetera, et cetera - with the shutting down of his body came the shutting down of himself, the feelings he once felt so strongly and the admiration he felt for anything at all that lived in the world that treated him so cruelly. His body was dying, and so was his soul.

You sat beside him on the couch and didn’t dare bring those thoughts forward. As his partner, it was dire that you kept up good spirit around him, never losing hope for another miracle, a sudden turn-around of his health, just something good to happen.

You didn’t dare think of how dead Jeongguk already was, though he sat before you and your fingers were intertwined with his thin, dry strands of hair. You didn’t dare confront those thoughts, not only to remain a positive force in his life but also to save yourself from the agony that would come from thinking of it.

“Have you eaten yet? Don’t tell me you’ve been laying here all day,” you smiled endearingly at him and mindlessly pet his head. His gaze remained unfocused in front of him, eyes glassy and void of life.

“What else is there for me to do?” His answer is cold and lifeless and you continue to run your fingers through his hair. You hold back a sigh and let out a hum instead.

“Well, what do you want to do now?” You began a new sentence that quickly puttered into silence, not knowing what to suggest. He closes his eyes and for a moment, you think he’s fallen asleep under your touch. The TV keeps going, the foreign language chugging along the dramaticized plotline of some sort of Superman, happy-go-lucky fictional character.

His eyes remain closed when he finally says it.

“I want you to go.”

You’re a bit taken aback at his unadulterated forwardness, but continue as if nothing happened nonetheless.

“Oh, o-okay. I can ju-”

“I want you to go. I want you out.” His eyes are open, but not as the wide, glittering saucers you stared into for so much of your life. You retracted your hand as if touching him burned you; your hand hovered above him, hesitant and hurt.

“Yeah, fine, I’ll -”

“I want this to end. I want to go to my mother and I want you to stay out of it.”

The room is silent as death, quiet and filled with an paradoxical heavy absence.

“What?”

He begins to push himself up, and he swats away your shaking, helpful hands. Your own eyes begin to glimmer with shining hurt.

“I don’t want this anymore. I just - I want to die in peace. I can’t have you hovering over me every fucking second you’re around me, I won’t die being coddled, I...I want you out.” He rests his forearms on his knobby knees and leans forward, looking exhausted from letting that off his chest. You stare at him with your jaw open, shocked and hurt and offended and - fucking pissed.

There’s another pause while your brain turns and melts to process his words.

“What?”

He doesn’t respond, instead continuing to stare ahead of him at nothing with a cold mug.

“Jeongguk. What the fuck did you just say?”

You are not sad. You are devastated, yes, deep down, but above all you are furious. Your hands and jaw clench and your breathing deepens and falls unevenly. He is stupid, he is so fucking stupid and you are in disbelief at how unbelievably idiotic he’d just proven himself to be.

“I don’t want to see you anymore.”

You refrain from grabbing his face and forcing his eyes on you. You stutter on nothing for a moment before the rage adjusts enough for you to start letting him have it.

“What the fuck are you talking about? You don’t want me here anymore? Are you fucking insane?” You speak with so much venom that he begins to wring his cracked hands together.

“You stupid bastard. I’m good to you. I always have been. I’m your fucking best friend and I’m not going to let y-...us go out because I know you and I know you don’t mean it. You’re angry and upset but so am fucking I.” Angry tears are falling from your eyes like the drip of an IV. Your throat feels like it’s shutting. “I love you and you’re my fucking soulmate and you...you’re everything. You’re not fucking doing this.”

His eyes are closed and his head dips down in a humbled position (or is it just his sickness? You couldn’t tell). He says your name and it sounds wrong. There is no light in it, no admiration or endearment. He says your name as if he’s speaking to a child throwing a tantrum. Perhaps that’s exactly what he was doing.

“You’ve been overbearing since we were kids. You can’t just respect my last wishes?” He looks to you with dead eyes, face frowning and begging to just be done. You are still red-faced, breathing heavily and radiating anger. You shake your head slowly in disbelief.

“That’s not your last wish.”

“Yes, it is.” He says your name again and you both want to vomit. “It is.”

“No. No, it’s not.” Your posture begins to crumble and the devastation inside of you begins to reveal itself. “You’re my best friend, I know you. This isn’t what you want. What do you mean when you say that you don’t want me with you?” You reach out to him but he blocks your touch again.

“I don’t want you to see it happen. Truly, I truly do not want you there when it happens. When I’m at my worst. Please, please, just...go.” You are crying and he is not. You are still in disbelief and expect him to turn around and say that he’s kidding, or that he’ll ask you instead to turn around and come back as soon as you’ve got one foot out the door. You want to turn around and see him by the window, wearing his Daffy Duck pajamas and drawing you. He hadn’t drawn you in so long now.

You can only think of one word. “No.”

He sighs and heaves himself up to get into his chair. You don’t reach out to help him.

“No, how could…why would I ever do that? How could you ever think that?” Your whole body seems to cave in on itself with sadness. He sits in his chair with his hands on the wheels, but does not move away.

“It’s what I want you to do. It’s about the last thing I want you to do for me.”

“So you want me to fuck off?”

He doesn’t say anything for a moment and you’re hanging off the edge of the couch staring at him. His hands retreat to his lap and he looks down; you wonder if he is sad too. “Yeah,” he says.

You scoff, though not intending to be rude. Wordlessly, you get up from the couch and walk right past him, abandoning yourself to your shared bedroom and locking the door, falling into the Jeongguk-scented sheets and pinching yourself to see if you were awake.

You stayed in bed for long period of time and you thought it had to be close to morning when you rose from the sheets once again. You never knew for sure.

You assumed that Jeongguk was still in the apartment somewhere, unless he (god forbid) wheeled himself down the many levels of the building and ventured into the icy night wearing only a thin cardigan and homely thermals. The click of the bedroom door’s lock echoed through the complex with an ominous thundering and your shuffling footsteps sounded of a dead woman’s. You searched for him with a clogged nose and swollen, red eyes, and almost wanted to laugh at how distraught you probably looked. Surely by now you had both calmed down and were ready to rationally discuss Jeongguk’s feelings, and surely he didn’t mean it when he said what he did. Perhaps some medication caught up to his body too harshly and he was speaking some sort of fever nonsense. Perhaps the anime he was watching coated him in a thin layer of desire for your decades-long love story to end with an explosion and a somber farewell. Perhaps being struck with the grief of losing his own life caused him to act hastily and carelessly. You didn’t quite know.

He had wheeled himself over to the window and your heart stirred achingly at the sight. There he was, as you’d seen him so many times, yet so unfamiliar. There was a time in Jeongguk’s life when he saw the upcoming end as an opportunity to fill his time with the richest beauties in his small world; most of his time was filled by you. Now, as he approached what looked to be his true ending, he welcomed it and spent his days anticipating his final breath. He had become so tired, so ill of so many years of being ill, being poked and prodded and tortured. He was preparing for the farewell of his body on earth by also preparing the farewell of his soul, and with that came his farewell to you.

You stood behind him and made no sounds but he knew you were there. He says your name again. “I’m serious.”

Your face crumples and you harshly rub at your falling tears. A broken sob makes its way out before you turn around and kneel before him.

“I don’t get it,” your cries are desperate. Your hands rest on his knees and he looks down at you apathetically. “I don’t understand why.”

For the first time that evening, he begins to choke on his words. “My last…my last wish of you is to leave me be. I want to be with my family. You’ve done…” a pause as he collects himself, “so much for me. This is what I need from you now. I’m sorry, but I need you to respect what I want.”

He looks at you for a tender moment. Gone is the look in his eyes from that night you took him to see the sunrise; that Jeongguk is gone, and who is before you now is simply remnants of his old self, the old self that has been packed away and already moved beyond this world.

“I want you to go.”

You ask him why once again with such hurt in your voice that he looks away for a moment; how long has he known that he didn’t want you in his final days? How long has he been keeping you around until the time came to shoo you out of his life?

He tells you simply - he has known since he was a boy, even before your graduation and the sun you saw that morning. It seems that he’s known forever.

Your goodbye to him was simple as well. You retreated back to your room that night and did not come out until dusk the next morning. You didn’t dare look out the window at the rising sun. He slept in the guest room that night and you stood behind the closed door for a long moment with your hand on the doorknob. With furrowed brows, you let go and moved past the room, exiting the apartment and holding yourself to not look behind you.

It had been years and years since then, both of you now adults living drastically different lives. His mother had kept minimal contact with you for that first month apart, most likely to Jeongguk’s request. The last you had heard of him was that he had moved back in with his parents and the waiting game had begun. While Jeongguk waited for death, you waited for anything - a part of you, the teenage girl in the sunrise, desperately wished for him to arrive on your doorstep, standing and healthy and all, asking you to forget everything that happened and offering you his hand, or least just a fucking kiss or something. You wanted your happy ending with him, but as time drew on and days turned to years before you, you knew that piece of fate had been drowned away with the storm he carried in his death-riddled hands.

You still laid your head against your steering wheel, taking shallow, fast breaths and continuing to cry at the thought of it all. Jeongguk was your soulmate and you had known since you were children.

He was your soulmate, made of the same matter and pieces of sunlight, and he had pulled away from you for so many years in preparation for his impending grand exit where he would arise back into the stars from which he came. For what should have been the most golden years of your life, he had instead prepared you for the gaping hole in the earth he would leave, and still, it was far too big for you to handle.

“Why are you calling? You were just here.” His voice sounds weak over the tinny cell reception and you pause to take it in before responding.

“I didn’t even know you had my number still saved.”

He pauses now, and the sound of the downpour fills your ears.

“What is it? Are you okay?”

Again, you take a long moment to respond, relishing in what was sure to be one of the last times you heard his voice.

He feels a chill on the back of his neck in worry for you. “Did something happen?”

“No. I just - I’m just...calling. I’m just calling.”

You can’t see it, but you feel the smile that blooms on his face.

“Jeongguk,” you say for no particular reason at all.

“Jeongguk.” You are still crying and his chest clenches at the sound.

“Yeah,” he responds. He says your name back to you, whispered in awe as if it would blow away if he spoke too harshly.

“I’m just calling.” Your mind is swimming, not even attempting to process what you’re saying before it leaves your mouth. It’s so painfully obvious that you are crying.

“Yeah? You missed me?” He speaks so softly and when you close your eyes, you are taken back to when he would whisper to you in bed all those years ago, sweet nothings and filthy pillow talk and love and soul and passion.

You whimper and he clenches his bed sheets with pale fists.

“I’m going to,” you whisper.

Both of your eyes widen and he is stunned, unable to think of a response.

“I’m gonna miss you. I’m gonna miss you so much.” You are sobbing grossly now. “I’ll miss you, Jeongguk! I love you so much and I’m so sorry and I’m going to miss you!” You are bawling again, overwhelmed with the intensity of your confession.

“Y-yeah, baby, I know, just, just stop crying!” He laughs uneasily. “I know, baby…” his voice begins to shake. “Stop talking like that, stop talking as if I’m already gone. I’m right here. I’m talking to you now, don’t worry. I’m right here.”

Your breathing evens out eventually, and the adult in you urges you to apologize for acting like a child, but you can’t bring yourself to it. You can’t bring yourself to apologize for unleashing what has been inside of you for years now.

“Jeongguk, do you love me?”

He lets out a breath in awe. It had been so long.

“Always. I love you, always.”

Jeongguk moved back in with his parents for the final time after weeks of your visits. He remained stagnant for a while, but it meant nothing when he was remaining in such poor condition. You followed him blindly, taking an extended leave of absence from your job and leaving the idea of quitting completely in a close pocket of your mind. You didn’t know what to expect, but there would be an aftermath, a life after Jeongguk’s death, the giant, gaping hole he would leave behind in his departure. There was going to be a you after him and you were unsure who you would be. Surely she would be far, far from where you were now.

Jeongguk’s condition worsened rapidly with his discharge from the hospital. He spent his days in the bedroom of his childhood with you in the same chair pulled up by the frame. Though neither of you wanted to say it, he was going to leave the way he started - next to you.

He had become lucid in the past week or so, falling in and out of consciousness at the strangest times and becoming unable to decipher what was real and what was not. Nonetheless, you stayed at his side, wiping his forehead of clamminess and watching him slip away once more, for the final time.

His family members rotated between you sitting with him, each getting alone time with him and making their best efforts to hold a conversation with a man that could barely do even that. He spoke nonsense as if he was having a fever dream and he would soon be back on his feet with some bedrest and Tylenol.

His mother had warned you that his condition had worsened to a point she had never witnessed before. She told you of what her counselor had advised her to do in the painfully recognizable last days and you listened half heartedly with a polite smile.

She was telling you to say goodbye. You had begun to do just that.

You often found yourself stroking his face absentmindedly, thumbs running over the texture and the protrusion of his cheekbones. It was as though you were blind, reading his facial features and attempting to decode who he was to you and what it felt to feel for the last time. You whispered his name.

His eyes remained closed, but the weak bunny twitch of his lip let you know he was listening. You felt a slight lean into your touch and closed your eyes for a moment, trying to imagine when he would do that with fervor.

You whisper his name again, just because.

“Jeongguk,” once more, once more. “I...I love you.” You are unable to think of anything else to say. He leans further into your touch and you kiss his clammy forehead.

“I love you. I’ve loved you since we were kids.” You smile and run your thumb over his lips, which twiched with what you knew was a smile. “I’ve never loved anything else, not like I love you. You know that right?” With a soft smack, he kisses your palm and you lean forward to kiss his lips.

“I never stopped. Not for a second, I swear. I’ll never stop. Okay?”

You know he won’t open his eyes, but you wish that he would.

“I love you. I love you.”

His breathing is shallow and thin and your gut tells you that you will have to yell for his mother in just a moment.

But for this second, you allow yourself one moment of selfishness, one moment, one more kiss, one more goodbye, once more, once more. You kiss him again, and his lips twitch.

With the rasp of the last time he’d speak, he whispered to you as he always had.

“You were my miracle. I love you.”

Your hands intertwine and you wipe a tear from his eye before yelling out for his family.

“I love you. I love you.”

And once more, he whispers too.

“I love you.”

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