There were no “what are you talking about?” questions this time, there was no pretending. Bomi sat down, knowing exactly what her girlfriend meant.

“It doesn’t hurt that much,” she began to explain. “The pills were awesome at first, but the pain has been gradually coming back.”

“And you decided not to tell me.” It wasn’t even a question.

Bomi looked at Chorong, guilt all over her beautiful features.

“It isn’t that bad.”

“Yet.” Chorong wouldn’t allow Bomi to push it off that quickly.

“Yet,” Bomi repeated, agreeing with her unnie with a sad smile. “But we were having such a great time like that; I could not bear to see your worried look back so soon. You’ll have time for that, later.”

“Don’t talk like that.” Chorong turned around and continued unpacking, considering the conversation over.

But Bomi wasn’t done yet.

“What else did he say? This was obviously not the important thing for him to call you.”

Chorong didn’t look at her when she answered.

“He said he’s been in touch with a colleague here in Seoul, and that he will be your doctor from now on. He has your medical history and has decided it would be better for you to start chemotherapy as soon as possible.”

“Better for me?” Bomi asked about Chorong’s choice of words.

“You need to do it. Immediately. Otherwise we won’t even be able to say that there was a chance for you to live,” her voice cracked at the end, and Bomi took a step forward, her hand in Chorong’s shoulder.

Bomi used the strength she had left to turn Chorong’s body around by pulling her shoulder. When she saw the older girl’s face, her heart missed a beat. Chorong’s face was filled with tears, salty drops of despair travelling down her perfect cheeks.

“Unnie… Unnie, don’t cry.” Bomi sounded helpless. “Unnie, why are you crying? Don’t cry, unnie.”

Chorong hugged her girlfriend, but she was careful not to be too harsh. Bomi, on the other hand, didn’t feel the same and pulled her closer, as close as they could get. They fitted together, like the pieces of a perfect puzzle that moved against each other by impulse, filling the spaces up until they rested against each other, the only place where they could be like that. Complete.

“Unnie, I will not break,” Bomi said, embracing Chorong tighter. 

“I can’t lose you.” Chorong’s voice was merely a whisper. “Or I will.”

∼

It was late at night, sometime around 2am, when Namjoo got waken up by some noise in her room. She looked around, and saw Hayoung with her head buried between her knees, never-ending sobs coming out of her.

“Hayoung-ah? Hayoungie, what’s wrong?” She stood up and walked towards Hayoung’s bed, barely two steps away. “Hayoung-ah?”

The maknae wouldn’t stop sobbing, no matter what Namjoo did or said. The older girl sat next to Hayoung on the latter’s bed, her arms around the maknae’s weak shoulders which wouldn’t stop shaking.

“Hayoung-ah, did you have a bad dream? What is it?”

Hayoung lifted her head for a moment, and Namjoo could see her reddened eyes, even darker in the room’s dim light. Tears fell down her cheeks in a never-ending movement, like streaming water. Hayoung kept wiping them out with the back of her hand, but she finally gave up and kept sobbing.

“I dreamed…” She began with a cracked voice. “I-I… B-bomi-unnie… She…”

“Calm down, Hayoung-ah,” Namjoo tried to comfort her once more. She could feel where this was going after all. “Everything’s okay.”

“N-no… B-bomi-unnie… She d-died.” She finally said the words. “And then… I just… I just c-couldn’t… I couldn’t d-do anything…”

Namjoo didn’t say anything then, she just tightened her embrace. Her arms hugged Hayoung, wanting to protect her from the outside world, from the unfairness of it all.

“Hayoung-ah, that wasn’t real,” she said when the maknae’s crying didn’t stop. “Bomi-unnie’s okay, she’s here. It was just a nightmare. Hayoung-ah, don’t cry.”

“B-but… it was s-so real…” Hayoung wouldn’t stop shaking, and Namjoo was growing hopeless. “And what if… what if she really d-does d-die? What if…?”

Namjoo swallowed and mumbled comforting words nonstop, but the maknae wasn’t calming down.

“B-bomi-unnie… She’s just… Why…?”

“Hayoungie, you need to calm down and sleep,” Namjoo said. “Or you’ll wake them all up. And it was just a bad dream, think of something else.”

“I c-can’t…”

Namjoo stood up then, her arms leaving Hayoung. She had decided to go look for help, since she obviously wasn’t enough to help Hayoung calm down. She muttered some words of comfort to the maknae before opening the door and leaving.

She walked down the corridor to Chorong’s room, the one she shared with Bomi. The leader would know what to do; she always knew what to do. She was the leader and the oldest one, after all.

“Unnie?” She tried to make her voice slow so she wouldn’t wake everyone. “Chorong-unnie?”

She saw the two older girls lying together, cuddled against each other in one bed. But she didn’t feel uncomfortable; Namjoo just smiled knowingly.

“Chorong-unnie?”

Chorong finally woke up and looked at Namjoo, confused.

“Namjoo-ah? What’s wrong?” She rubbed her eyes in such a cute manner that Namjoo couldn’t help but smile.

“It’s Hayoung-ah… She woke up because of a bad dream and she won’t stop crying. I’ve tried everything I could to comfort her…” Namjoo looked down and continued with an even softer voice. “She dreamed… she dreamed of Bomi-unnie dying.”

Chorong was completely awake by then. She sat up on the bed, careful not to wake Bomi up, but the younger girl shifted uncomfortably when her position got changed.

“What’s happening?” Bomi’s voice was barely heard.

“It’s okay, go back to sleep.” Chorong caressed her forehead, her Bomi’s hair curled during her sleep. She was so cute when she was sleeping, like a calm child.

“Is Hayoung-ah okay?” Bomi asked. She had heard the conversation, after all.

“She had a bad dream,” Namjoo explained, blocking the light from the corridor with her body so Bomi could open her eyes. Chorong shook her head so Namjoo wouldn’t continue, but the younger girl owed Bomi. “She dreamed of your death, Bomi-unnie.”

Chorong was standing up to go check on Hayoung, but Bomi grabbed her wrist.

“Unnie,” she said, her voice low. “Let me go see her.”

Chorong nodded, sadness deeply reflected in her eyes, and lie down on the bed once again. Bomi kissed her on the forehead and muttered something in her ear before leaving.

“Namjoo-ah, you can stay in my bed tonight,” Bomi pointed at the empty bed in that room. “Let me be with Hayoung-ah.”

∼

“Hayoung-ah?” Bomi knocked on the doorframe before coming in.

When she saw the sobbing maknae, Bomi’s heart broke a little. The ache in her chest because of someone else’s pain was something she’d been getting used to lately, even more than her own.

Bomi sat down next to Hayoung, and hugged the girl tightly. The maknae raised her head and looked at her unnie, their eyes locked. Bomi could see Hayoung’s eyes, flooded with salty tears.

“Hayoungie, it’s okay.” Bomi tried to speak calmly, but the ache in her chest just grew more and more. “It’s okay; I’m here. Unnie is here.”

“Unnie...” Hayoung wiped her tears with the back of her hand.

Bomi was surprised when Hayoung hugged her out of a sudden, making Bomi fall on her back, and the maknae buried her face in Bomi’s shoulder, crying. Bomi sat up slowly and rested her back against the cold wall, supporting Hayoung’s weight with her own.

“I don’t want you to die, unnie.” Hayoung showed that she was no more than a kid, a scared child who didn’t want to lose her friend.

“I don’t want me to die either.” But Bomi’s smile didn’t reach her eyes, the issue too serious for her to be able to joke around comfortably.

Bomi started to caress Hayoung’s hair softly, in a continuous movement. The sobs were dimming with time, Bomi’s arms around the girl never losing their strength.

“I am scared, unnie,” Hayoung muttered. “I am really scared.”

Bomi couldn’t help her tears then. Something broke inside her, whatever had been left after Chorong had spoken up her pain first. Seeing Hayoung, who was always happy and lifting the members’ mood, in such pain and fear was too much for Bomi, and she couldn’t help the tears that streamed down her face.

“I am scared too, Hayoung-ah,” Bomi finally said, her voice cracking. “I am way more scared than I allow myself to be.”

Hayoung shivered and her sobs ended, replaced by a soft amount of crying that just couldn’t be helped. Once the maknae’s body had stopped shaking, Bomi felt better, but her grip around Hayoung never softened.

“I don’t want you to leave me, unnie,” Hayoung kept talking, unaware of how painful every syllable was for Bomi. The older girl couldn’t help her tears; huge, salty drops of sadness and despair sliding down her cheeks.

The worst thing was that there were no words she could say that could comfort Hayoung enough; there were no words to comfort Bomi herself. The feeling of being helpless took control of Bomi’s heart, and everything felt empty. It felt like every ray of sunshine was gone and only helplessness was left for them.

Hayoung was falling asleep; Bomi could see it in her face. The tears had stopped falling down the maknae’s face, the only thing now were dry paths of saltiness on those pale, silken cheeks. Bomi tried to hug Hayoung in a way that would make her sleep better, in a way that would help Hayoung remember, in a way that would help Hayoung recall this moment of comfort forevermore.

“I love you, Bomi-unnie.” The words could barely be heard while the maknae shifted to sleep, but they were more than enough. They were everything. The simplicity of them touched Bomi’s heart in an unexplainable way.

“I know, Hayoung-ah, I know,” she said, wiping away her tears with the saddest smile she had ever been responsible of. “I love you too.”