“I noticed nothing that Sunday except that the Orange Girl was missing. I only had eyes for what wasn’t there.”

The Orange Girl, Jostein Gaarder

 ♦ Jinki ♦

“Would you have chosen to live a life on earth at some point, whether short or long, in a hundred thousand or a hundred million years? Or would you have refused to join in the game because you didn’t like the rules?”

Ha-Yun read from the book and Jinki barely looked at her even though he was listening to her calm sweet voice.

He knew why she chose that book because he read it before. He didn’t told her though, pretending to never have heard the story because he liked to hear her voice too much, because even though he didn’t admit, those hours she spent by  his side talking about nonsense or reading were the best hours of his day.

“I asked myself the same question many times during the past few weeks. Would I have elected to live a life on Earth in the firm knowledge that I’d suddenly be torn away from it, and perhaps in the middle of intoxicating happiness?”

The book was about the relationship of a father and a son but it was more than that, it was about cherishing the time we have on Earth, about cherishing the ones we met before we die.

It was now reaching the main point of it. Would you choose to live knowing that you would die?

He knew why she was reading it. He couldn’t walk and yet he was alive. He could have not chosen to live at all but then wouldn’t he be missing the good things that happened with him until then, and the ones that would follow?!

“If I’d chosen never to the foot inside the great fairytale, I’d never have known what I’ve lost. Do you see what I’m getting at? Sometimes it’s worse for us human beings to lose something dear to us than never to have had it at all.”

She stopped reading there raising her eyes from the book to him and Jinki could feel her gaze on him and the disapointment on it. He barely reacted to what she read and that seemed to sadden her more day by day.

It has been almost a month since he entered the hospital, since he stopped to walk and he knew that soon he would have to leave the hospital and accept the fact that he was now a disabled person. Once he left that bed it would be real, he won’t be a patient anymore. He will be just him, a man that can’t walk.

“Does it annoy you that I come everyday?” Ha Yun asked making him finally look at her.

Some days he could notice her red eyes and he knew she cried, others she would look really tired and he knew that she was lying saying that she wasn’t overworking just to meet him.

Still everyday Ha Yun entered his room smiling, everyday she would try to make him smile and fail and everyday she would scold him once he mentioned something like death.

“Not really!” He loved that she came everyday. He would count the minutes to see her again, because when she was beside him he didn’t feel alone anymore, he felt like the old Lee Jinki. However it was hard for him to smile, it was hard for him not to feel sad or angry.

If only she knew how he would smile internally every time he saw her enter his bedroom.

Ha Yun marked the page she was at with an old yellow post it and closed the book.

Jinki took his time admiring her features, her long nose and small lips, her small eyes like his, her rebel dark black hair with red highlights falling from her ponytail.

Ha Yun was actually pretty and sometimes he wondered why she wasn’t married yet.

He knew she had her share of men interested on her but she seemed to always push them away.

It was probably his fault and the feelings she had for him. And now, once again he was making her stay by his side like a selfish bastard.

“Go home!” He said suddenly, rudely.

He was upset with himself; upset that he was doing that to her. “You annoy me!” He added trying to hurt her, to make her not come back like he did with his other friends that slowly stopped coming asking her for news instead.

But like so many times before Ha Yun barely flinched and looked at him instead biting her lower lip.

“What if I do that someday? What if I don’t come back tomorrow? Will you miss me?”

Yes, he thought to himself. He would miss her deeply but it was the right thing to do.

“No.” He lied.

“Will it make you feel better if I start to ignore you or hate you? Will it make you walk?” She asked crossing her arms upset, raising her nose in the air like the sassy girl she was.

Jinki his lips without an answer to give and she smiled.

He would have smiled too if he remembered how to do it.

“I thought so!” She placed the book on the bedside table and stretched her arms in the air cutely. However his eyes moved down her body noticing the curves of her chest and down.

Ha Yun was a beautiful woman in every way and she didn’t deserve that.

“Go home, please!” He asked this time with a gentle voice “You don’t deserve this!”

“You don’t deserve this either” She said caressing his leg over the blankets “And yet here we are. We make our own decisions and we have to be responsible for them. Me staying with you is my own decision!” She patted his leg “This wasn’t your decision so...I won’t let you miss me! I’ll stay until you can run away!”

Her words made him emotional and he had to look away not to cry.

Ha Yun was truly beautiful and she was right.

He would miss her.

 ♦ Ha Yun ♦

“I have a surprise for you!” Ha Yun said opening the plastic bag she brought and taking a drawing notebook from it and a box with coloring pens.

She showed them to Jinki managing her best smile, expecting a frown from him but instead he looked at her interested, like a bunny waiting a treat. He was in a good mood then and Ha Yun smiled even brighter. She loved when he was in a good mood, that meant that he wouldn’t scream with her that day, that he wouldn’t call himself a cripple, that that day she didn’t need to read the book because he would play with her and speak with her instead.

“What are we going to do?” He asked as if she only left the room for five minutes and came back, when she did leave him the previous day.

“Let’s draw. You said you like to draw right?” She remembered how he used to make small cute doodles on the side of the pages of his notebooks “Let’s draw animals and make a game! A guessing game!”

His eyes shine a little and he grabbed the box with pens taking one from inside it.

“Let’s draw each other’s faces instead. And see who is the best at it!”

It was the first time he made a suggestion so she brightly accepted it and sat in front of him. Anything that required her to look at him for long minutes was a good idea. Ha Yun grabbed a pen and started drawing on her sketchbook, her eyes moving from the paper to him. She would never draw him, she had no skills for that and even if she did he was too beautiful for it to ever be captured on paper.

“You should smile!” She said happy that his mind was away from what he missed, from his legs and the skill he forgot; and was somewhere else, currently on her face.

Yes, he was looking at her, he was drawing her and he was doing it barely looking at the paper, his gaze on her making her uncomfortable.

“I should!” he said, the corners of his lips moving upwards slightly giving her a small smile but that was enough to take her breath away.

Lee Jinki was looking at her, smiling at her, his gaze never wavering.

“Aren’t you drawing?” she asked blushing, hiding her face behind the sketch book.

He pulled it away so he could see her, his actions making her heart beast faster. She would never resist those eyes. She was never able to.

“Stop hiding!” he said softly.

“I’m not!” she answered, she never hid from him, she was always there beside him and she was glad that he was finally realizing it.

“I’m finished!” he said then, making her gasp because she barely saw him draw anything. He turned the sketchbook to her and Ha Yun stared at the drawing before laughing. It was a simple sticky figure with hair and a face and she looked horrible in it.

“What?” he asked surprised with her reaction.

“I look so ugly….omo… you truly see me like that???!”

He turned the sketch to him his eyes lingering on the trails of ink in it.

“I think it’s beautiful!”

She laughed a lot longer watching him pout cutely until she realized that he just called her beautiful.

“Aaaah maybe we should play your game next!” he said pensively ignoring the way her heart was going crazy with his silly drawing and words.