“So Taemin… How do you feel about having a complete check-up to see how the chemo is coming along?” Jinki was walking backwards in the hallway of the hospital with Jonghyun and Key both guiding him so he didn’t hit anything as he filmed Taemin for their videos. “If it’s going exactly as the doctors planned, then you’re halfway through treatment right now. How does that make you feel?”

“Hopeful. Depressed.” He said both with a straight face before giving a smile to the camera. “Watch out hyung. There’s a wall.” Jinki moved just before hitting it and fake glared at his guides before turning back to Taemin. “I mean, I hope it is all good. But… that feels too good to be true. So it’s depressing. I don’t know, film someone else for once.”

“Key?”

“Excited. Nervous. Scared.” The diva shrugged and then jumped back a step when he saw the camera not an inch from his face. “Afraid of you.”

Jinki gave a little chuckle before turning to his other side. “Jonghyun?”

“I don’t know; nervous? Curious? I just want to know how it’s going.” He shrugged the leader off and nodded towards Minho walking ahead of them. “Go ask frog eyes.”

“Curious and don’t you dare come near me with that camera or so help me god, you are dead Jinki.” The leader stopped his sneak-approach on the rapper still a few feet away, but he had never turned around to see him. “We’re here. Turn that off now.”

“No.” Taemin took the camera before Jinki could, shocking all of them. “I want it on. Whatever happens, I want us to be able to look back on it exactly as it happened.” He handed the camera over to Minho, pleading with his eyes. “Please. You always the one standing on the side,” everyone but Taemin seemed to notice the flinch as those words tore into him, but Minho just looked back at the maknae, “so can you film it all as you see it.”

“Sure…” He took the camera in his hands and made sure it was still on and rolling, even if he really didn't want to. “Anything for you Taeminnie.”

Together, they entered an office that they knew as well as the back of their hand by now. The nurse was already there and smiling at them as Taemin took his common seat. After making sure Minho actually was filming everything, he had the blood drawn and ate his cookie and juice with all smiles. “Are you ready to go to the x-rays now?” He nodded and stood to follow after her, the others trying to go with him. “I’m sorry…” She looked at the four before turning to Taemin. “Only one other person can come.”

“Jonghyun-hyung?” The singer seemed a little shocked but nodded and stepped forward. Minho passed the camera into his hands while Key pulled out his own smaller one from a bag to film what they were talking about the whole time.

Giving a smile to the others, Jonghyun and Taemin followed the nurse out and through the halls to the radiation department.

As Taemin was positioned in the room, Jonghyun stood in the little observation area with one of the technicians, filming everything as Taemin asked him to do. And as the pictures came up on the screen, he focused the camera on them as the doctor looked them over. “Um… is there still supposed to be that big thing there?”

At first he thought he was being ignored, until a pencil eraser tapped against the screen, right on the spot. “No. It’s not.”

When the two walked back into the room, the three in there were all smiling and joking around. Taemin fit right in with them, smiling as he talked about how cool the machine was. But as soon as he had stepped foot in the room, Jonghyun had passed the camera off and left saying he needed the bathroom. Ten minutes later, he still hadn’t returned.

Where are you? Jinki checked his phone for the tenth time since sending the message, but there was finally a reply.

I had to get out for a few. I’ll be back in a minute.

Why? It was another solid minute before he got a reply.

…You’ll see when the doctor gets there. “This can’t be good,” he muttered under his breath as he closed the phone and put it back in his pocket, trying to ignore the looks from Key he was getting.

Jonghyun made it back to the room only a minute before the doctor walked in. It was obvious to Jinki he had been crying, but no one seemed to be able to see it other than him. The doctor walked silently to his desk, carrying Taemin’s file under his arm, but didn’t say anything at first. “Did the results come back yet? Am I getting better?”

Each question seemed to make him a little more somber and the man finally turned to them. “The chemo… has helped improve the part of the tumor attacking your lungs. The parts that were growing on your lungs have shrunken enough that a surgery can be performed to save them now.” Smiles broke out on the three youngest, but Jinki and Jonghyun still stayed somber, just like the doctor.

“So I’m getting better?” Taemin’s eyes had a sparkle in them that hadn’t been there for a while as he leaned closer to the man.

“…Not quite.” Any noise in the room stopped then and Taemin’s smile fell as his eyes became darker and confused again.

“What? But didn’t you just say it was helping…”

“It is helping your lungs.” He tapped both sides of his chest, as if dumbing it down for Taemin. “Your heart,” he tapped the center, even though it wasn’t needed, “has not shown much improvement yet. You will still have to continue chemo after the surgery and it can help then, but at the moment, there seems to be nothing that can be done.”

“Is he…” Key swallowed hard and tried to blink a few tears from his eyes as he looked at the shocked-silent maknae. “Is he going to die?”

That question had all of them flinching and the doctor didn’t answer at first so Taemin leaned a little closer. “I’m going to, aren’t I?”

“There… there is a large possibility for something to go wrong, especially after you’ve already had attacks causing heart and breathing problems. But the surgery could provide a relief from the pressure in your chest that could allow for your heart to continue working even if the tumor isn’t removed. If the surgery is not performed…” Even the doctor seemed a little troubled in saying the last part.

And Taemin beat him to it in that one little pause. “I die?” He nodded. “How long would I have?”

“Six months at most. More likely around three.” Even the semi-gruff voice of the doctor was softer and smoother as he said that, trying to say it in the calmest way possible.

But Taemin only nodded as the others were stunned to silence. “And there’s still a chance I could die after the surgery?”

“Yes… I cannot promise you will live even if you get it. I also cannot tell you what to do, but I will say that, if I were in your place, I would go through with it. Even if your life is not extended, it will lessen pain and make it easier to breathe.” He looked at Taemin, expecting the boy to have broken down by now.

But he still seemed to be taking it perfectly fine. None of the others could say that; not even Jonghyun when he was expecting bad news. And then the biggest shock came from his next question. “When’s the earliest I could have it done?”

“I’m currently backstage at our performance on some music show I don’t know and it is sometime around nine at night on the fifth of July.” Taemin smiled at the camera, but his cheeks were more sunken in now and made even his brightest grin seem not as happy. “This is the last performance I’m allowed to do before my surgery at the end of the month, so wish me luck!” After the short video, he clicked the camera off and took his seat in a makeup chair to let the stylist do whatever needed to be done.

And the whole time, he ignored a slight ache in his chest, too focused on the upcoming even to care.

His ever-handy chair was on the edge of the stage once again and he couldn’t help but smile as he sat down. Compared to even the not-so-large armchair, he looked like a baby doll next to an adult, like skin and bones and nothing else. He practically was.

The others began to take their places and he gave each a little smile and wave before turning his attention to the audience, doing the same. Lifting his arm sent a sharp pain through his whole chest, but he managed to hide it until right before the stage. And Jinki noticed and was already ready to stop the whole live stage just for Taemin, but the maknae gave him a smile and shook his head slightly. By then, the music started and there was nothing he could do.

With each line Taemin sang, the pain intensified until just breathing felt like someone was stabbing him through the heart. Black spots were starting to cover his vision and that was when Taemin decided enough was enough. His mic was turned off and he practically dove from the chair to the backstage area just a few feet away, handing off his handheld and ripping the earpieces from his ears just before he started coughing. The workers back there only looked on in shock as someone called his manager over and another tried to give him a bottle of water to drink.

Through the earpiece still half in his ear, he could hear the yells for Jinki and Jonghyun to cover his parts and that they had to continue no matter what, and then the yells of Jin over that telling the backstage people to cut it all off.

And Jin won. The lights on stage shut down as the track stopped suddenly and by the time they came on a few seconds later, the other members were already by him and Amber as a lone host of the show on stage with no card on what to say or anything. “We apologize for this, but please be patient. There is an emergency backstage.” A writer was holding the cards up as they were written for her to read, but as soon as that part was done, she was jogging off-stage herself, leaving the crowd in silence for only a second before they began whispering and yelling and so many other things.

The whole time, Taemin was on his hands and knees, focusing as best he could on breathing and nothing else. It didn’t matter who was around or what they were saying or anything, not until he could breathe. Jinki was frantically searching for the inhaler that was Taemin’s life-line while Key and Jonghyun both tried to get him to sit back and still just slightly while Minho was trying his best to find any of their bags for the medicine.

But it was Amber who came running from their dressing room with the plastic lifesaver in her hand, giving it over to Jinki without even saying anything and panting slightly from just how fast she ran for it. While the group worked on getting the medicine into Taemin and calming his breathing down a little, she had left with Minho once again, coming back a minute later carrying a water-cooler with his help and clutching a familiar bottle of medicine in her other hand. “Here. Someone already called for an ambulance so it should only be a few minutes.”

There was still nothing said from the three as they focused on the blue maknae. Most of the groups had come to see what was happening and were all left shocked at what they saw.

Because it was the proof that, no matter how he acted most of the time, little Taemin was actually so close to death that he could taste it any day.