"Your cough is getting pretty bad."

Eun-shil held up her head to look at her colleague who was looking at her worriedly. She almost laughed at her face but decided not to do so to not to offend her. She smiled and finished typing in the last sentence in her report. The other woman who was standing before her desk was eyeing her carefully.

"I'm fine. It's just the weather... and the... pollution?" She said, getting up while laughing a bit and stretched her hands, massaging her wrist.

"But it's been going on for more than weeks." She said, furrowing.

"I guess the noise is disturbing?" Eun-shil asked and sat down again.

"It's not the noise." She said, rapidly. "I'm just worried since you've been coughing non-stop. Have you seen a doctor?"

"I did. I took my cough med and all but it wouldn't go away... Yet." She said, widening her eyes at her laptop and heaved a sigh. "It'll go away soon. Don't worry."

"I think you should go to the doctors again. You're looking pale too." Her voice was kind.

Eun-shil looked up to her and smiled. She promised her to go but she was lying, of course. It was going to take more than a long series of cough to send her to the doctors again. When her colleague went out of her office, she took her phone and looked at her address book. Woohyun's name was on top of the contact list and she felt the urge to tap his number but after a moment of looking at his number on the screen, she put her phone down.

She decided that she didn't know what to say to him and it had been months since it had been that way. They were still together but they rarely met up and when they did, they would only argue about Eun-shil being too busy and him sleeping with some other women again.

A week before she received her blood test, she was on another business trip. Works kept her mind off Woohyun and her other problem so she would never stop looking for something to do. When she felt like she missed him badly, she'd do more and more work. She knew what Woohyun was doing behind her back but she couldn't blame him for it. She couldn't be there for him.

That morning she woke up from sleep feeling lethargic and when she looked at herself in the mirror, she found her nose was bleeding. She washed them immediately but the blood wouldn't stop. It took a while before it did. It must be from the extra hours she pulled off the few weeks before that were exhausting her, she thought. She was wrong, of course. After patting her face dry, she went out of the bathroom and looked at her messy bed, sighing.

Woohyun was nowhere to be seen for the fifth day after she told him she would be away again. Sometimes she felt that their relationship had gone 'dry' but none of them could actually end it. They would end up together again; especially for Eun-shil who had nowhere else to turn to.

She only had him.

Her nose bleed several time during the business trip and her team leader finally told her to go home ahead to get some rest. Eun-shil had to obey but when she got home, she felt restless. She wanted to call Woohyun but again, she changed her mind and went to the hospital instead where she first heard about her condition.

The doctor mentioned something about 'acute' but Eun-shil was soon lost in her explanation. She couldn't understand how she was sick; she didn't smoke and she only drinks occasionally. She went to gym twice in a week and she never slept with anyone else but Woohyun. Then, why?

Why was she sick?

Eun-shil couldn't even cry, but in her mind, she was reminded of a kid at the orphanage who died of the same disease and that left her almost shivering. She looked up from the paper the doctor was explaining from.

"I'm going to die, am I?"

The doctor was a bit taken aback by the sudden interruption, she could tell, and not because of the question. Eun-shil knew she was lying when she denied it but when the doctor said something about 'family', she laughed wryly, making the doctor fell quiet again.

"Family." Her eyes were losing focus. "Family."

The female doctor was then explaining about her treatment and everything but she wasn't listening anymore. All she could think of at that time was the fact that she was going to die. Her mind went to Woohyun next as she went out of the hospital building and sat in her car. She took out her phone and stared at his number for a while before hitting dial.

Then she waited.

The phone rang and rang but he never answered it.

"Please... answer it..." She leaned her forehead against the steering. "Please. Please."

She didn't know how long she kept trying and how many times she redialed his number. She didn't even remember how many times she kept on repeating "Woohyun-ah, please. Answer it..." She didn't even realise when she started crying but she lost all her energy along with her cellphone's battery.

But even when the phone was dead, she kept on muttering, "Please... Answer it. Woohyun-ah... Please."

She never cried as much before and she thought then that that she would cry any harder.

She was wrong again.

When Woohyun first arrived at the orphanage, he was quiet and refused to talk to anyone. He locked himself up in the boy's dorm so Eun-shil couldn't meet him for the first few days. When the adults finally thought that he needed to start mingling with the other kids, they made him go out of the dorm.

"You play?" Howon, the captain of the team asked. He was a few years older than the rest of the kids, and was considered as one of the seniors at the orphanage.

Woohyun was quiet, not looking at any one of them, except for the ball at his feet. He turned without saying anything and went to sit under a tree where he took out his parents' wedding rings. Eun-shil who was coming around noticed him immediately. She went near him and stood towering him and waited for him to look up to her. When he did, she smiled brightly but his eyes looked empty and his face was emotionless. Eun-shil however didn't stop smiling.

"I'm Eun-shil. I'm 6 years old." She said, holding out her hand. "You're the same age as me, right?"

Eun-shil had heard that Woohyun's parents died in a car crash and there wasn't any family member that could take him in. She had wanted so much to meet him but Woohyun was always nowhere to be found. So, she was really delighted when she finally saw him, though she could least expect what was going to happen then.

Woohyun stared at her hand but he didn't take it and his gaze went up to her face again for a while before he looked down his lap. He was twirling with something and Eun-shil noticed the pair of rings in his hands.

"Those are nice rings you have there." She said, looking down the rings before sitting on her heels. "Can I have a look at them?" She touched his hands gently to peel his fingers that were holding the rings.

Woohyun's eyes perked up violently before she saw the anger in his eyes and without warning, he leaped up to her face and pushed her down the hard ground. He sat on her stomach and started to pound her face hysterically and Eun-shil, terrified, was screaming in a high voice and tried to shield her face from his nails and fists. The other kids came over and tried to pull him away from her but he was holding onto her shirt strongly and reaching mindlessly for a rock nearby, he pounded her head with it.

Eun-shil's scream went mute immediately but another kid was screaming in a shill voice in her place. Woohyun's eyes widened and his whole body shook when he saw th