“Yerin!” Sinbi has never seen Sojung so pale. “Yerin, come on, breathe!”

Yerin has fallen onto her hands and knees, her entire frame shaking, but somehow she raises her head and stares at Sojung. “S-Sojung unnie?” she rasps, stained red by what Sinbi desperately hopes is the rose petals.

“Yes, it’s me.” Sojung reaches out and takes her hand. “I’m here. You’re okay.”

She says it like she knows the two statements are linked: I’m here, so you’ll be okay. I’m here, so you’ll never be not okay again.

Sinbi wishes that she could give the same reassurance to Yerin.

Yerin lets out a slow, wheezing breath, one last petal leaving , clinging to the corner of her lips until Sojung reaches out and brushes it away.

“Sinbi,” Sojung says, eyes not leaving Yerin. “I think Yerin could use some water right now.”

Sinbi isn’t always the best at picking up hints, but it doesn’t take a genius to recognize that she’s being dismissed. She gets to her feet, unnecessarily brushing off her pants and tugging down her shirt just so she has a reason to stay in the room a little longer, look at Yerin a little longer. Just to make sure she’s okay, of course.

“I’m fine now, Eunbi,” Yerin says, like she’s reading her mind. “Sorry about worrying you.”

“Don’t apologize to me, just make sure it doesn’t happen again.” She gives Yerin a meaningful look, and then glances at Sojung, who’s staring at her with that odd look again. When she catches Sinbi’s eye, Sojung returns hers to Yerin. “I’ll, uh, go get that water.”

“Thank you,” Yerin and Sojung say at the same time.

Sinbi tries not to let her feet drag as she walks away, but they feel as heavy as her heart.

“You’re sick,” Sojung says flatly as soon as Sinbi’s out of sight. “With the Hanahaki Disease.”

Yerin is absently grateful that Sojung doesn’t say with unrequited love, or worse, because of me. Maybe she hasn’t picked up on that? (Yerin laughs at the thought. It would be an insult to Sojung’s intelligence to hope for that, but hope could be notoriously difficult to stamp out.)

“Is it Sinbi?” Sojung asks, sounding almost desperate, like she’s drowning and it’s a plank she wants to grab hold of.

“You now it’s not Sinbi,” Yerin says quietly.

“Right.” Sojung’s mouth twists. “Because if it were Sinbi, you wouldn’t be sick.”

Yerin frowns. “What?”

“Never mind,” Sojung says. “How long have you been hiding this?”

“A while,” Yerin says, looking down at her hands.

“Why didn’t you tell me?” Sojung asks, quieter now, almost hurt.

Yerin gives her an incredulous look, like she’s saying are you really asking me that, and Sojung says a quiet “ah.” Then, a beat later, “That was a dumb question, wasn’t it?”

Yerin laughs. “Yeah. It kind of was. And you’re not dumb, unnie. I’m not going to act like you are by feeding you some lame lie.”

Sojung swallows. “So you mean…you—” You love me? she clearly wants to ask, but it seems that she can’t even get the words out.

“Yeah,” Yerin says simply, so she doesn’t have to. “I do.”

“Oh.” Sojung is silent for a moment. “Were you ever going to tell me?”

“At one point I would have,” Yerin says honestly. At the point where roots are growing in her lungs and there is no conceivable way to hide it anymore, she would have. Or maybe Sinbi would have. “I can’t hide it forever.”

“And if you could, you would?” Sojung sounds—angry now. Angry at her. And even though she knows Sojung isn’t angry because of her feelings, just that she tried to hide them for so long, it makes her deflate. “Yerin, this isn’t a small thing we’re talking about. This is your life. Your life. Don’t you care about it? Are you really just going to throw it away for, for—”

“Don’t call it a stupid crush or something like that,” Yerin says, low but not soft. “It’s not just that.” She looks away from Sojung. “I don’t want to make you uncomfortable,” she adds, polite. “I understand if you—”

“For god’s sake, Yerin.” Sojung grabs her wrist and, suddenly, pulls Yerin close to her. Then Sojung’s arms come around her. “Don’t ever scare me like that again,” she says, half-choked against Yerin’s shoulder. “Do you have any idea how I felt, seeing you coughing your lungs out like that?”

“I wasn’t—” Yerin says reflexively, even though she’s amazed that she can speak at all with the way her heart has climbed into .

“I thought I was going to lose you,” Sojung murmurs, like she’s confessing a secret. “I don’t—I’m not trying to make this about me but—”

“Of course it’s about you, unnie,” Yerin says with a tired chuckle. “It’s always been about you.”

It’s always been you.

Sojung pulls back and stares at Yerin with eyes that look a little wet. “You’re not going to get the operation, are you?”

“You know the answer to that question already.”

“I could tell the managers right now,” Sojung says, but it’s not a threat and they both know that.

“You can,” Yerin agrees, “and I still won’t change my mind. Maybe they’ll make me go through with it anyway. Maybe there was some fine print in our contracts that applies to cases like this. I wouldn’t put it past them.”

Sojung’s face crumples. “Yerinnie, what do you want me to do?”

I want you to love me, Yerin’s heart cries but her mind shushes it. Sojung can’t make herself feel something any more than Yerin can make herself unfeel something. Love isn’t voluntary like that. It’s not something in their will, in their control.

And even as it’s literally killing her, she can’t bear to be free from it.

“You don’t have to do anything, unnie,” Yerin says with a calmness that impresses herself. “I’m not asking anything from you.”

Sojung says nothing for so long that Yerin wonders if this is her way of ending the conversation. And then, “Why don’t you?”

“What?”

“Why don’t you ask me?”

Yerin’s eyebrows draw together. “Ask you what?”

Sojung doesn’t take her eyes away from Yerin’s. “Ask me to love you.”

A/N: Double update because I don't want to be mean and end on a cliffhanger.