His eyes hadn’t been flickering away from the door for almost ten minutes now, not since they had brought Jonghyun in to have the transplantation done. He hadn’t spoken a word all day, not to Minhyun, not to Aron and not to Jonghyun’s parents. They were all just sitting outside the operation room, waiting in silence.

It had stopped raining for the first time in days and they sky was now grey and looked as if it had been made from cold steel. There was no wind, no sounds from trees getting shaken in a breeze or from raindrops hitting the windows in a storm, not even a bird had dared to sing all morning.
Minki felt as if the whole world was holding its breath, waiting in anxiety for the result of Jonghyun’s operation. Not until then would anything be able to work regularly again, and even if it was, it wouldn’t matter to him if he couldn’t share it with Jonghyun anymore. If Jonghyun didn’t make it, he might as well just kill himself as well.

The sounds from the room didn’t reveal a thing though.

He had no idea if what he heard was good or bad, or if he even heard it at all. Somehow he imagined it all to be some cruel trick his mind was playing on him, feeding on the dreadful fear of losing Jonghyun any minute as a revenge for everything that he had caused. But he didn’t have the courage to ask the others if they could hear it as well. If they said no he would have to consider whether or not he would be capable of feeling the burden from their concerned looks upon his shoulders, and frankly he was too much of a nervous wreck already to handle any potential worries regarding himself along with what was already having his full attention.

Therefore he didn’t know if he should be happy when he heard the voices behind the door starting to shout and panic, and Minhyun grabbed Aron’s hand, hiding his face in the shirt of his newfound lover when they heard it, too. For a sick and horrible moment he even thought of smiling when he found out he wasn’t going completely insane after all, then he came to realise what all the raised voices might mean and he felt like screaming instead.

His fingers were turning white as he pressed the blood from them by holding tightly on to the chair, suddenly scared that he would fall if he didn’t.

And then in the middle of what sounded as a total mayhem behind the closed door, a monotone shrill pitch carved its way through it all and in a split second entered Minki’s head like a knife slicing silk.

The sound of the electrodiogram that now lacked a pulse to scan made Jonghyun’s mother crouch in the arms of his father, both of them crying inconsolably when they slowly understood that their son was dead.

Minki couldn’t move. The awful strident sound would loosen its grip on him and he just sat there for what felt like hours, staring paralysed at the sterile white door. Then the realisation started to sneak into his thoughts, then exploding in his mind and his body, releasing the most severe pain he could ever remember having felt in his life. Tears flooded his eyes, falling with the speed of waterfalls, yet none of them carried even the slightest bit his suffering with them and he let out an agonizing cry to try and drown that ghastly dreary sound but it just wouldn’t stop. It kept ringing pitilessly in his ears, on and on and on…

He fell from the chair, his shivering body no longer able to keep sitting up straight and he crouched on the floor, squeezing his legs hard towards himself; his nails scratched the skin they clung to and he hid his face as much as he could in his knees. When Minhyun tried to put his arms around him he didn’t even move, instead he kept weeping beyond any form of comfort, desperately longing to either die or just get that sound of loss out of his head before it crushed him from the inside…

That heartless piercing pitch sounded so mockingly and the sheer terror he felt from knowing that he was now alone was only increased by its merciless ringing. Oh God, he couldn’t take it, he’d rather disappear, he’d rather just die…

Then there was a sudden hiss and the sound shattered into smaller pieces again.

“It was extremely close, but it’s safe to say that the surgery succeeded”.

“What happened?”
“His heart stopped. Actually he was dead for several minutes and if we hadn’t been ready to try and revive him right away he probably wouldn’t have come back. But he made it. And neither his brain nor his body seems to have been damaged by it”.

The doctor smiled at them, happy, even though a bit worn out, too.

Minki hid his face in his hands, his whole body trembling as he took a deep breath from relief; he panted as if it was the first time he filled his lungs properly for a long time. He had been crying even more when he found out that Jonghyun had survived after all.

“When can we see him?” Jonghyun’s mother asked in a very low voice. Her cheeks were still glossy from tears.

“We have to check up on him first, to make sure that everything is fine with the new marrow and he’ll have to rest a lot, too while he builds up his immune systems again. We also have to do a few tests on him, and take a few samples. But he should be able to take in visitors within the next week”.