“Move!” Aron made Minhyun let go of Minki and placed him on the floor. The blonde was quivering, obviously in too much pain to even scream. “…”

He grabbed a pair of scissors from the first aid kit and cut off Minki’s shirt to expose the wound completely.

“We have to get that bullet out of him, now! It looks as if it veered on his clavicles, it shouldn’t be too hard…” Taking a deep breath he picked up the tweezers, then he realised his hands were still shaking.

“What’s wrong? Aron, what’s the matter?”

“You have to do it”.
“What?!”
“I’m sorry, but my hands are too unsteady. If I try, I might end up making things worse!”

Looking as if Aron had asked him to jump in front of a train, Minhyun picked up the tweezers and wiped his tears to get a better look at the wound.

“I’ll make sure he doesn’t pass out. All you have to do it grab the bullet and then rip it out as fast as you can, okay? Piece of cake, right?” He patted Minhyun on the shoulder, trying to seem as if he had everything under control. “Minki? Can you hear me?”
“Yes…” His voice was way too weak and his pupils were already dilated to the extreme.

“Good. Now, whatever you do, keep looking at me, okay? And don’t move. Can you do that”.
“I think so”.

Aron lifted his gaze and nodded at Minhyun, who swallowed a big lump of fear, before he drove the tweezers into Minki’s shoulder. Immediately he let out a scream and tried to twist away, but Aron grabbed both his arms and forced him to lay still.

“Listen to me, you have to keep talking. You can’t pass out, okay?” Aron bit his lip when he noticed how Minki’s eyes were flickering upwards. “Stay with us. Think of Jonghyun, okay? Tell me about him”.

“He’s… ungh… the best thing that ever happened to me…” He squeezed his eyes shut as Minhyun pushed the tweezers closer to the small metal ball. “I love him… oh God, make it stop…”
“Good, you love him. What are you going to do?”
“I’m going to save him… argh! Stop it!” He groaned and tried to twinge away from Minhyun again, but Aron wouldn’t let him. “He can’t die…”
“That’s right, and neither can you.” He could feel how Minki started to get covered in sweat and his face grew paler. “Don’t pass out! Tell me about your sister!”
“My… sister…”
“Yes, your sister, what was her name?”
“Minhee… I killed her”. Tears was flooding his eyes as the pain increased in his heart, too. Aron brushed his bangs away, which had been sticking to his forehead.

“That doesn’t matter. Just tell me about her. Tell me how she looked”.

He let out an agonizing cry as Minhyun finally got the tweezers closed around the bullet.

“Minki, tell me what she looked like, now”. He looked at Minhyun again, lifting three fingers and Minhyun nodded. “One”. He didn’t say it, he just formed the words with his lips.

“She had long hair… Black… Please, stop… She was always happy and, ungh, she liked to play with Sammy”.

“Who was Sammy?”
“Our dog… Oh God, just kill me!”

“Two… Which kind of dog was it?” He fastened the grip around his arm, slowly pushing more of his weight into his hands to make Minki completely unable to move. “Do you remember?”

“Hyung, I can’t…” His voice was fading.

“Don’t you dare die on us now! Minki! Keep talking.”
“S-Sammy was a retriever… But he died when I was four. I think it was… my fault as well…”
“Three!”

In one determined sweep Minhyun dragged the bullet out of Minki’s skinny shoulder and Minki’s words disappeared in a piercing scream, leaving him crouching on the floor in a pool of blood.

“Oh God, I’m so sorry sweetie” Minhyun cried devastated. Carefully he reached out and Minki’s long hair.

“You shouldn’t be sorry, you just saved him”. Aron leaned over Minki to peck the brunette on his split lip. “You did great. Now, let’s get the wound dressed and we’ll be off”.

Aron looked as if he was about to explode.

“You told me two snipers! TWO! Do you even know how ing close Minki was to being killed?!”

His fingers were white and blood-lacking from clenching the phone as they drove to the airport.

“You have my most sincere apology, now would you stop shouting? I have a war on my hands here, I’d like to see you handle that”.

“Fine, whatever, just… We’re leaving for Seoul now. Have Fisher…”
“Fisher is out the game, the police have him.”
“What?!”
The leader sighed irritated.

“They caught him a few hours ago and they’re not gonna take their hands off him again. He wasn’t able to explain how he found Kang Dongho, so they still think he’s behind the kidnapping. Just be glad they don’t know about you, too!”

Aron cursed and put the phone in his other hand.

“Okay, then have someone else at the Gangnam Severance Hospital link Jonghyun to a hemopurifier as fast as possible. And find a bone marrow donor with blood type B that resembles him. I’ll talk them into try and do a transplantation on him…”
“Aron, that’s madness! We’ve tried that before!”

“I know…”
“Yeah, and it didn’t work! In his condition you might as well just stab him in the chest!”

“Whatever, just do it. If we don’t try he’ll still die”.

He hung up and put his phone back in his pocket, still frowning as he looked out the window. No matter how hard he tried to think it through, a transplantation of bone marrow was the only thing that could possibly save Jonghyun. If just he hadn’t been so weak… It wasn’t exactly an operation that went easy on the body.

“Aron?” Minki tilted his head and looked at the older guy. “How… how is a transplantation going to save him?”

“With a bone marrow transplantation there’s a 30 per cent chance of him getting another blood type as a side effect. That’s why the donor with the new bone marrow has to have a different type than him to raise the odds of that happening. The problem is that to even do the surgery they’ll have to kill off his entire immune system first. And as you know, the Helix blood reacts as an infection. If he doesn’t have an immune system at all, he’ll be completely vulnerable…”

Minki nodded bleakly, turning his head away again; his eyes were as candles that had been put out. Every aspect of his beautiful face was grave with hopelessness.

“There’s really no way we can save him?” He still looked more pale than Aron liked, and his headache had started again.

“Minki, I promise, I’ll do everything I can, even if I have to stand next to them during the surgery and keep his heart beating myself!”

“Thank you hyung…”

Closing his teary eyes, he leaned back and tried not to think of the impossibility he would face if he ever had to live without Jonghyun by his side.