Warning!

Another massive chapter.

And there won't be a closing note because....there's no need for one.

Good luck surviving this chapter.

Enjoy the pain!

“Hyung, help me, please.”

That was the last thing she heard. The fog slowly lifted, and all she wanted was to talk to him. To tell him that she was alright. That she was awake. Gyuri took a deep breath and opened her eyes. 

Her eyes did not open. She struggled as if someone had glued her eyelids together. She tried to rub whatever was keeping her from opening her eyes, but something rough scratched the skin around her eyes, making her wince. She tried again, whimpering in desperation, until that voice and that warmth she had become so dependent on reached her.

“Wait a second,” he said in a gentle tone she found so assuring. “I’ll do it for you.”

She relaxed just a little, waiting for him, unable to see what he was doing until something hot rubbed her eyes. She let out a little squeak, taken by surprise by the sudden heat. He was gentle, removing whatever kept her eyes closed, although she disliked the sensation of pealing something off her skin.

Once the surprise of waking up was gone and she waited patiently for the writer to work around her eyes, she finally noticed her own lack of movement. She tried a tiny bit of movement, aware of how much it hurt before, but nothing in her body seemed to get the signal. She couldn’t move. There was something heavy on her back, hindering any type of movement.

“I’m almost done.” He whispered, noticing her squirming in discomfort, “Gyuri, calm down.”

“Where—“ She wanted to ask, but hurt with a coarse burning.

Before he could clean her eyes completely, her desperation got the best of her, and she snapped her eyes open. The sunlight blinded her momentarily, making her wince again, and everything around her was suddenly dark. He called her name with a tone that infuriated her more, and the more he did, the more she could feel his hands touching her, trying to calm her down.

“You’re safe, Gyuri,” he whispered in her ear. “You’re safe now.”

As if his words had some sort of power, whatever panic had her on edge disappeared, and she was finally aware of her body. It was his closeness that seemed to help her settle, his lips peppering her skin with the softest of comforts, and his hand pressing hers against his chest where she could hear his steady heart.

Gyuri eventually calmed down, engulfed in his embrace, and for a moment, she wanted to stay like that forever. It was the instant that she tried to move again that brought her back to reality.

“Am I dead?”

“No.”

And then silence. He pulled away, taking all of the comfort with him, and the dark and round eyes that found her were even worse, if that was possible. She saw his jaw clench and blink. Kyungsoo was there, and once again, he was the witness to her lowest point.

“You have to tell him.” He said, “Gyuri, Baekhyun needs to know.”

Gyuri flinched at the words. The sweetness that just minutes earlier could’ve saved her from doom was now dry and gone. He didn’t even look at her in the eyes, and she stared at him dumbfounded, wondering if she was actually dead. A living Kyungsoo would never say such a thing. He would never meddle in her business about the curse. He never had.

“He knows something's wrong.” He kept on, his fingers anxiously fidgeting with her hand. “He's looking for you and is bombarding your parent's phones with calls and texts. He won't stop until he knows.”

If she wasn’t dead, she must’ve been dreaming because the words that came out of his mouth couldn’t be true.

“Don't make them lie for you.” He begged in a whisper.

She wasn’t dreaming. The strength of his hands holding her let her know. The warmth of his skin was too overwhelming for her mind to simulate. So the writer himself, Do Kyungsoo, was indeed asking her to do the very first thing she decided to avoid. He, the one who had been with her from the beginning, was meddling. He was trying.

She pulled her hand away, making him finally look at her, and for an instant, a hint of anger flashed across his eyes. He stepped away, and what she saw rattled her core. He looked exhausted, his clothes splattered in blood. So it hadn’t been that long since she collapsed.

"Don't," she croaked, refusing to believe that he would even ask.

“Gyuri, you have to.”

“No.”

“He doesn't hate you.” He argued back, his eyes glistening. “Why would he spend an entire hour knocking at your door and waiting for you or your parents to come back?”

Gyuri shook her head, unable to talk and feeling her eyes watering. He asked again. He pleaded under his breath, his voice cracking, and she refused once again. She felt her face burn in anger. If she didn’t tell Baekhyun before, what made the writer believe she would tell him now that she was a step away from her impending doom? 

Did she say all that out loud? She didn’t know, but his face was twisted in frustration. Kyungsoo closed his eyes, taking a deep breath. What she never expected was for him to change. The Kyungsoo who opened his eyes was a much harsher and less patient man. His eyes hardened, looking at her with nothing but emptiness, and Gyuri shivered at the coldness that followed his words.

“Just know that you’re killing him just as slowly.”

With that, he pressed the red button on the panel board next to the bed. The buzz of an alarm distracted her, and soon the room buzzed with activity. Her parents came in, gushing over her, crying, and showering her with love. As horribly upset as she felt, she just couldn’t push them away. She bit back the annoyance and let them shed their tears in peace.

Once the mood settled and her mother stopped crying, Gyuri heard someone come into the room. She was lying down on her side, so she couldn’t see who it was, and when the male greeted everyone present, she couldn’t recognize the voice. Then she saw the man in the impeccably white coat show up in her peripheral vision, and the face was awfully familiar, but Gyuri couldn’t tell where it came from.

“Hello, Gyuri,” The man said with a tender white smile that was charming. “I’m Dr. Kim Junmyeon, and I’ll be looking out for you from now on.” 

That name rang a bell in her memory, and she observed the doctor as he walked around the bed where she was lying, trying to connect the dots. It was not until he stood right in front of her and bowed his head to her that Gyuri finally recognized him. He was beautiful. She always marveled at how handsome he looked on the brochure but never thought he would be so overwhelmingly beautiful in the flesh. She even wondered if she was still dreaming.

“Wait, you’re the researcher.” Gyuri pointed out, struggling to keep the astonishment out of her voice, "You’re the head of the Korean WHO division and the youngest doctor in the entire organization.”

“I see you did your homework.” He said this, trying to keep his smile small and not blind her with his beauty.

“It was one of those days.” She replied with a shrug.

Gyuri meant to make it sound lighthearted, but the doctor barely smiled in response. He nodded in agreement, probably highly aware of what she meant, and pulled a light pen out of his coat instead and held it in front of her eyes.

"Where am I? What's this place?" She asked as he directed her to follow the light left and right.

"A precaution." Dr. Kim said, turning the light pen off and putting it back in his coat pocket. "Kyungsoo got this place in case the disease came back for him. He got all the equipment and staff ready on standby."

The doctor gave her a meaningful look. He knew just how crazy what he said was, and Gyuri heard her mother gasp in surprise. If her parents didn’t know already, they knew now. The secret was out, and she felt bad for the writer. He just kept giving out parts of himself and the privacy of his life to accommodate her wellbeing.  

“How are you feeling?” The doctor asked, his polite smile going away.

And she hated everything about that question. She couldn’t even tell where she was exactly, and she was expected to tell the kind doctor how she felt. She didn’t know. She had never known for sure, and it was so hard to come up with the right words that Gyuri got so worked up that a machine started beeping out of control.

“Relax,” he said, placing his hand gently over her shoulder. “There are no wrong answers to this; just tell me how you feel. It doesn’t matter if it doesn’t make sense right now.”

The doctor’s word helped. She relaxed, but not enough to actually bring out an answer from her, and seemingly aware of that, Dr. Kim never lost his patience. His entire posture remained serious yet gentle. Gyuri suspected that there was nothing she could say that would make the doctor stumble.

“Are you in pain?” He asked, and she nodded. “What does it hurt?”

“Everything.”

“What about your back?” He said, looking away from her face to her back, making her feel self-conscious of what she couldn’t see, “Your parents told me they heard it snap.”

“I can feel my legs.” She said this, focusing all of her attention on her legs.

“You can?” He said, with a curious pout, “Can you feel this?”

Dr. Kim disappeared from her view for a moment, and Gyuri felt a pinch on the sole of her foot. She automatically jolted in surprise, making her and the doctor chuckle.

“I can move my toes too.” She said, wiggling her toes, which earned a pleased smile from the doctor.

“Well, that’s good!”

“I felt something break, though.” She wondered, trying to move her torso, but once again, she couldn’t.

“That should have been your back, but you just proved me wrong.” He said and for a split second, she watched as his eyes furrowed in worry. “We took some x-rays while you were unconscious.”

Gyuri didn’t like the tone in his voice. It was the same expression the other Dr. Kim had when he delivered the grave news of her diagnosis months ago. She watched the young doctor pull a white frame equipped with wheels out and place it in front of her. He placed the x-rays up on the screen and lit them up, revealing part of her squeleton.  

“This is what came up.” The doctor said, pulling a rolling stool in between her bed and the light frame, “It was impossible to tell if there was any damage to your spine.”

She suspected as much. Gyuri wasn’t knowledgeable in the slightest when it came to the human body, but she knew what a normal squeleton should look like. What the x-rays were showing wasn’t normal. Not only the white and whirling lines that had sprouted through her body were as unseatling as the white mass that went from her hips up to her shoulder plates. Whatever that was, it couldn’t be normal. Something had invaded her torso, and it made sense why she couldn’t move.

“What’s on my spine?” She asked, watching the x-rays in disbelief.

“It is not on it.” He said, sitting closer to her, “That is your spine.”

Gyuri had no chance to react. She heard her mother, somewhere in the room, burst into tears and her father comforting her. It was just as bad as she thought, and she couldn’t stop the tears that rolled down the side of her face. She never thought she would stay alive to see something like this happen to her body, and a wave of desperation urged her to move. She tried to get up, to stand up, and to make sure it wasn’t real, but the doctor stopped her, assuring her that he was there to answer her every question.

“Just tell me, no lies.” She said, her voice trembling in fear to hear the answer, “What’s exactly happening to me?”

“Are you aware of the several types of flower corpses?” He asked.

Gyuri has seen the pictures. On one of those bad days, she just let her sadness take her to a dark and morbid place as she watched hundreds of pictures of corpses. She’d seen the ones that had the stem protruding from their mouths, or the mounds of flower petals and juices. 

“Which one am I turning into?” She asked, trying her best not to succumb to the desperation while her mother kept silently crying in the background, “By the dahlia flowers that invaded my house, I’m assuming I’ll be covered in some kind of ground bush, right?”

“It’s more complicated than that.” The doctor said, getting himself more comfortable in the small stool, although his expression remained just as serious, “You have a variant of the Hanahaki disease that is extremely rare. The stem won’t come out of your mouth as any other case does, nor will you throw up so many petals that you’ll disintegrate or get covered in grass.”

“What are you trying to say?” Her mother asked, finally coming closer to where the doctor was talking to Gyuri, “What will happen to her?”

Dr. Kim brought out a tablet and showed Gyuri the gallery with what looked like hundreds of pictures of her back. The bruises were gone, and her breath got stuck in the knot in at the sight of her skin split open, red, bleeding, and alive, and the rough edges of something dark protruding through her flesh right between her shoulder blades. No wonder she could barely move.

“What you see there are crusts covering what is growing from your back.” The doctor explained, "We believe this is the stem of the plant you're turning into, and it will be quite a painful transformation.”

Overwhelmed by the news, Gyuri turned the tablet off and handed it to the doctor. She noticed in the motion that her knuckles were not just hurting with the scratches of her own nails; the wounds were bigger and more horrible. The very same thing that was growing on her back was now also sprouting through the skin of her hands. That was what hurt her eyes when she tried to scratch them open. 

“Your joints hurt, right?” The doctor kept on with the explanation. 

“It feels like they’re glued to each other.” She replied, trying to move her fingers, although she found it harder than she thought.

“They kind of are.” Dr. Kim agreed, taking her hand in his to point out the scabs around the rough edges of the wounds. “Your ligaments are hardening and will eventually become sapwood. Your skin isn’t just drying up. It is solidifying into bark.”

Everything went still. As if sensing Gyuri needed a minute to put her thoughts together, the doctor stayed quiet, observing her reaction, and she appreciated the brief break. She needed it as her brain went overboard with the recollections of everything she had ever felt in the last few months. Finally, every symptom—the stiffness in her back, her knees and heels hurting and stopping working out of nowhere, the insane amounts of moisturizer and body cream—made sense.

“I’ll become a tree, you say.” Gyuri finally said out loud, letting the idea sink in.

“Essentially.” He agreed, giving her a small smile full of emotion.

“I’ve never heard of that before.”

“That’s because your case might be one in billions.” He said, looking at the x-rays with a frown, “I’ve never heard of a case like yours registered since the breakout.”

“Wow, so it turns out I’m actually special.” Gyuri chuckled at the irony of the entire situation, but the comment had the opposite reaction, making her mother burst into a crying fit again. “Mom, I’m joking. Don’t cry; I was joking!”

“That’s not something you joke about.” Her mother argued back, but her father was by her side.

“Why don’t we let our pumpkin talk to the doctor alone?” He said, embracing his wife and slowly walking away.

Gyuri and the doctor watched her parents leave the room as her mother kept on complaining about her lack of seriousness. As much as it hurt to see them suffering, a part of her warmed at the immense love she felt for them and their well-meaning concern. Then she caught the doctor observing the x-rays again, and she couldn't come up with an accurate read on his expression.  

“What do you need then?” She asked, bringing his attention back to her, “You’ve been studying this disease your entire career, and I happen to be a one in a billion case. I’m extraordinary, am I?”

“That’s right, you’re extraordinary.” He said, leaning forward to rest his elbows on his knees and be at her eye level. “But I’m more concerned about making it less painful.”

“Thank you, but I’m dying already.” She said, thinking in all the moments she wished everything could be over. “Whether you do a couple of experiments or not, I’ll die either way.”

“I’m sorry.” Dr. Kim said it with genuine concern.

“Don’t be. I am the fool who fell in love.”

“Falling in love isn’t foolish, Gyuri.” He said with such seriousness that Gyuri felt exposed under the doctor’s eyes. 

“Tell that to my heart.” She laughed, trying to deflect the intensity of his words, but regretted it instantly when her chest hurt. “Will it help anyone?”

“Any sample from you would give us new clues to follow the main strand of the disease.” He said, sitting straight, that it felt like the doctor was getting in a better mood just by talking about it. “That might be the key to finding a way to stop the cellular corruption, or at least an answer to how it actually works.”

“What did Kyungsoo’s samples tell you?” She asked, her mind feeling more and more alive as time went by. "Oh, I'm sorry; I shouldn't have asked."

"Don't worry," Dr. Kim said, waving his hands, and Gyuri just looked at him in absolute awe at the brightness of his smiling face and his eyes turning in the smallest crescent moons. “I wasn't on the case; I was still a student back then, and he didn’t let them take any samples.” 

“Why?” She wanted to know.

Gyuri wasn’t sure if it was alright to ask such a question. The young doctor was suddenly lost in his thoughts. He crossed his legs, and she was sure she could almost hear his mind working at full speed.  

“Back then, no one had the right equipment to run any proper test, except maybe for the Japanese.” He said, his hands resting on his knees, and for a split second, the man looked a lot younger. “And not even them. People were dropping dead like flies, and no one knew where to go. If you wanted a shot at getting tested, that meant submitting your name to the long waiting lists in the hopes of getting a chance. He didn’t want any of that.”

“It does sound scary.” Gyuri mumbled, remembering the chaos reigning on those days.

“It isn’t like that anymore.” Dr. Kim added with a proud smile, “You’d be surprised by the number of tests I can run right in this complex just with a tube of your blood.”

“Let’s do it then.”

Something in the atmosphere changed. The young doctor sat up straight again and looked at her with a curious glint in his eyes that made Gyuri wonder if there was something wrong, but at the same time, she had never been more sure of anything in her life. 

“Are you sure?” He asked, “Are your parents aware of what you want?” 

“They’re not exactly happy, but yeah. They’re okay with it.” She replied, recalling that her mother just burst into tears not that long ago but knew she ultimately wouldn’t object to her wishes. 

“You’re extremely brave for doing this.”

“That’s not something people tell me often.” She chuckled, making the doctor smile with such an immense amount of compassion that Gyuri had to look away. “But it’s fine; I guess it won’t hurt more than it already does.”

“We’ll do our best to make it as comfortable as possible,” Dr. Kim assured, finally standing up and making a sign somewhere behind her back. “This is Kim Jongdae; he’ll be your nurse, and I’ll leave you to him so he can explain what will happen from here on."

As if on cue, a young man stepped into her view, pushing a cart, and with a wide smile across his face, he introduced himself again. Gyuri felt suddenly out of place. She thanked the doctor, but he was already walking away, and she stumbled on her words when the nurse asked her something. 

"Are you comfortable with me being around you?" He asked, working on the fluid bag hanging next to the bed, "I'll have to give you a bath eventually."

Gyuri couldn't hide the surprise or the embarrassment burning in her cheeks. She was so taken aback by the sudden prospect of a man giving her a bath that she felt her words getting stuck in , which only managed to make the young male nurse chuckle in amusement.

"Don't worry about it; there will be a female nurse around for that." He said, pulling the rolling stool next to her bed, "I'll be too busy assisting Dr. Kim anyway."

The relief was instant. Gyuri couldn’t hide it, and the sigh of relief felt louder than ever. The young nurse looked at her from his clipboard and subjected her to the biggest pout she had ever seen. The little noise of disbelief was adorable, and even his brows moved as if on their own, making the nurse’s entire face contract.

“Your loss," he said, holding on to his pout. “I give very good sponge baths.”

The nurse sulked in his place, and Gyuri couldn’t help it; she chuckled at the pout and the almost childish little whine. It was impossible that someone older than her could look so adorable on command. 

“There it is! Such a beautiful smile.” He perked up, mirroring her smile, and said, "Now I’ll explain some of the equipment that we'll use with you."

As if by magic, Gyuri felt calm and relaxed in the presence of the new stranger who would take care of her. She felt at ease enough to welcome his every explanation and even snicker at every other little joke the man threw at her for the next hour.

Kyungsoo left the room on a whim. He stormed out, angry and frustrated, but he had nowhere else to go. He had been sitting in his car in silence for God knows how long, trying to find an excuse good enough to make him leave the premises he had prepared so long ago for a situation like this. He had everything ready for an eventuality of this kind, but he wasn’t the patient this time. He wasn’t the one withering away in a bed in a room of the secluded villa deep in the countryside. He had defeated the curse. He was safe, but why didn’t he feel like it?

He wanted to leave to gather himself, but he couldn’t think of anywhere else to go. There was no place he wanted to be as much as he wanted to be there, holding her hand. Taking a deep breath, he got out of the car and walked inside the villa, back to her.

He reached the hallway to his room, a room that was designed to be his when the time came, and ignoring the dreadful feeling in his chest, he kept walking. When he finally reached the room, he halted, watching Jongdae collect more blood while Gyuri read something from a clipboard. He heard her ask if the bone marrow biopsy hurt as much as she imagined it would. The nurse explained, admitting that it was a very uncomfortable procedure.

“You can’t do it.” He said, bringing their attention to him. “Don’t do it.”

“Kyungsoo…” Gyuri called him with such softness that he almost stopped.

“They’ll turn you into a lab rat.” He said, as he walked around the bed to see her face.

“I’m already a freak; I might as well do something good about it.” She added, handing the clipboard back to the nurse.

“Don’t do it.”

“Like you didn’t do it back then.” She asked, making the writer and the nurse freeze in their spots.

Gathering all of his equipment, nurse Kim apologized and left the room, pushing the little cart that suddenly made so much noise that it was unbearable.

“Kyungsoo, I want to do it.” Gyuri explained, looking away from him, “I just want to bring something good out of all of this.”

“It will be painful.”

“I’m in pain already!” She raised her voice, looking at him with a fiery glint in her eyes, but as soon as the outburst happened, she settled back and said, “Nothing will change my mind.”

He didn’t know what could break through her determination, and his jaw clenched and his fingers worked themselves, picking the nails in frustration. He might be quiet and look collected, but Gyuri looked at him, and he knew she could see the storm brewing in his eyes. The tension in his jaw and the impatience in his hands were hard to miss.

"What?" She asked, seeing right through him.

“I can’t see you suffering.” He finally said.

“You’ve seen me suffering for months now." She said, finally softening and looking a lot more exhausted and spent than she looked just seconds before, “Out of everyone, you’re the one that has seen me at my worst. What's different now?”

“I don’t want you to do it.” He pleaded, closing the distance between them to grab her hand. “Please, don’t do it.”

“Ok, tell me why, and I’ll think about it.” She said, looking at their holding hands with a hopeful expression, “Maybe if it’s a good reason, I'll change my mind.”

But he had no good reasons other than his own selfishness. All he wanted was for her to stop suffering. He would give his entire fortune to ease her pain, and signing up for the research program was totally against that. She would die in the worst of pain, and he couldn’t stay there to witness it. His face must’ve expressed every doubt and concern because her hands slipped from his to his face, and as small and delicate as they were, her touch felt surprisingly strong and steady.

“I’m sorry.” She said.

Not only her eyes, but her voice was so soft and filled with understanding that Kyungsoo flinched in response. He knew there was nothing he could say to persuade her. Just as she bravely tackled every challenge head-on, she would face her end with her head high.

Kyungsoo stepped away from her. He wanted to be angry at everything and at her, at her damned goodness and her seemingly blind faith in Junmyeon, but the resolution in her eyes did not falter for a second. He staggered back, refusing to believe that was all he could do to convince her.

He left the room again, torn between what he wanted and what he knew she needed, and burst into the main office, ready to fight the only person he could blame for this. Of course, he was still working to find a cure. If someone could find it, it was him. What angered him the most was his calm demeanor. The doctor didn’t even flinch when he came in and seemed to be waiting for him.

“What did you tell her?” He said while walking to the doctor.

“Kyungsoo, calm down first.” Junmyeon said, walking up to him as well.

“What did you tell her?!” Kyungsoo snapped at his calmness, throwing his hands at him, but someone pulled him back before he could even get any closer.

“It is what she wants.”

“You don’t know what she wants!” The writer yelled, trying to free himself.

Whoever had him in the tightest of locks pulled him even farther from Junmyeon while another door burst open and Minseok ran in, alarmed.

“What’s going on?” The editor asked, assessing the situation.

“Kyungsoo, she filled out the forms to join the program months ago.” Junmyeon said, never looking away from him.

“This is what you always wanted.” Kyungsoo ignored everything around him and focused all of his anger at the doctor, saying, “To become the famous doctor who found the cure. At her expense!”

“You brought me here!” The doctor finally snapped, “You kept calling me, and not once did I reject any of your calls, no matter how many times you hung up on me. I’m here for you!”

Realizing that he had lost control of himself, Junmyeon took a deep breath and closed his eyes. Kyungsoo seemed just as taken aback by the sudden burst of emotion from the doctor that he had stopped struggling against whoever was holding him back. The doctor made a small sign and the hold loosened, giving Kyungsoo the freedom to move, and then he heard nurse Kim apologize before letting him go for good.

“Believe it or not, as much as I want to push this research forward,” Junmyeon explained slowly and as easily as he could. “I know she’s suffering, and I want to relieve that pain, for