Before the sun rises, Hoya is out of the dorm and trudging towards the hospital. When he reaches Dongwoo’s room, he knocks and, although he receives no response, he strides in.

            Dongwoo is dressed in a turquoise hospital gown, sleeping. There are bags of fluid on tall metal stands by his bed, with narrow tubing which snake beneath the sheets. They make Hoya feel sick to the stomach, but Dongwoo looks, as always, serene in sleep. Hoya grabs the metal stool and perches on it beside Dongwoo’s bed.

            Over the next 15 minutes, there’s a tension in Hoya’s head that winds itself tighter and together. It becomes so tight that it seems to buzz unbearably. He reaches over and firmly shakes Dongwoo’s shoulder. Dongwoo’s head turns his legs shift, but he doesn’t wake up.

            Hoya reaches over to shake Dongwoo again but then pulls his hand back. He folds his hands into a tight ball on his lap, forcing himself to remain still. His grip is so tight that the buzzing inside his head seems to spread to his arms, making them vibrate. But Hoya closes his eyes, grinds his teeth, and looks down.

            Finally, Dongwoo’s eyes open to slits. They slowly register the lights above, and seem about to close again, when he notices Hoya besides him.

“Hoya? What are you doing here? What time is it?” He groans, slowly sitting up. He winces a little and moves one of his hands to his stomach.

“What’s going on?”

Dongwoo looks inquisitively at the IV needle stuck in the inside of his forearm, but his exaggerated facial expression, the eyes wide, eyebrows raised, and lips pursed, doesn’t fool anyone, and Dongwoo can tell.  His expression collapses.

“I have to explain some things, I’m sorry.” Dongwoo sighs and continues to look at his IV. Instead of his usual burble of words and laughs, Dongwoo talks methodically, selecting his words carefully.

“The doctor’s tests have found an unusually high concentration of toxins in my blood. In order to make a definitive diagnosis they did a liver biopsy. I was in surgery yesterday.”

Time decelerates, or perhaps Hoya’s mind kicks into overdrive, the buzzing getting louder, giving thoughts time to race -

 “They found that-“

- through and between Dongwoo’s words. As his thoughts race forward, Hoya feels as if he himself is being carried forward, too, by some strong current-

“I have –“

 -he’s being carried to the edge of a waterfall, and finds himself balanced there, at the apex of the cliff of water, waiting for his inevitable plunge downward

“Liver cancer.”

It was as if, a split second before his fall, the waterfall’s current had frozen, stopped by a lingering question.

“What does that mean?”

Dongwoo pauses, his gaze still fixated on the IV as his lips twist in thought.

“I’m not sure, yet.”

Hoya remains still.

Dongwoo is scheduled for surgery to remove a tumor the size of a golf ball from his liver early next week. A few tears escape from the corner of his mom’s eyes when she picks him up from the hospital, although Dongwoo laughs at her for worrying so much. She’s told to bring him back for prep the day before his surgery.