She tried calling him, But whenever she did, he would never answer. She couldn’t take it and she burrowed Gongchan’s phone. Only then did he pick up.

“Hello,” Jinyoung’s voice called.

“Don’t you dare hang up on me!” she said as soon as he answered.

There was no answer. Only silence.

“Why didn't you tell me?” she asked in desperation, sounding short of breath.

“Tell you what?”

“That you have less than a year to live of course!”

There was no answer.

“,” she cursed, starting to cry again.

“You know I hate it when you cry. Why are you crying? You’re not supposed to ing care. I'm dying. So what? You want me to die right? Did you forget I took advantage of you? Did you forget I had with you and then dumped you? Did you forget that article I wrote, shaming you as a ? Why are you all sad over me all of the sudden? It’s karma. I deserve to die, right?”

“,” she said again, still crying.

“I am an . And I’m leaving this world and I won’t ever haunt your world ever again. Now stop calling me and just erase me from your memories. Click command option escape and force quit me. Okay?”

-

When Shinwoo passed, Gongchan sunk into a deep black hole of depression. She tried to help the younger boy, but he was beyond help. He would listen to no one and see no one. He became aggressive. He became difficult to talk to and difficult to even look at.

He broke off his relationship with her later, admitting that he only ever loved Shinwoo. She was hurt, but not nearly as hurt as when her relationship with Jinyoung ended.

She reconsidered what Shinwoo had told her when he was still alive. Was Gongchan’s relationship with Shinwoo worth the pain he would feel when Shinwoo died? Would it have been better if Shinwoo succeeded in detaching Gongchan from himself? Would the blow have been less severe on Gongchan if Gongchan drifted from Shinwoo while Shinwoo was still alive?

-

Hyuna couldn’t take it anymore. She went to the office of WM magazine and waited outside the building. She waited for Jinyoung.

Jinyoung didn’t come. But she did find Baro.

“Hyuna-ssi, what are you doing here?” he asked when he saw her waiting outside of the building.

“Sir. Where is Jinyoung-ssi?”

“Do you want to file a lawsuit?” he asked, suddenly nervous.

“Well I actually…”

“I think you should know that he didn’t write that article,” Baro said, and Hyuna narrowed her eyes.

“What? He didn’t?”

“No, so don’t file a lawsuit against him. He wrote another article. If you would come inside, I will show it to you.”

-

She cried when she read it. He really understood her more than anyone she had ever known. He did really write the article she thought he had written, the article about how she’s not a , about how everyone misunderstands her. She read it time and time again in Baro’s office until she could sense that he was becoming impatient.

“Why wasn’t this published?” she asked Baro.

“Because it was too boring,” he said dismissively. “People don’t like reading articles defending celebrities. They like reading articles that put them down. I told him to rewrite it. He couldn’t write it, so I wrote it for him. He agreed to put his name on it though for some reason.”

“I see.”

“He assured me you wouldn’t file a lawsuit as well…”

“I won’t if you tell me where he is.”

“He’s spending a lot of time in the hospital. He has no obligation to come to the office anymore because he’s an official patient of the hospital.”

“Do you know how much longer he has?”

“I heard it was a few months, and if the lung transplant is successful, a year.”

“Lung transplant?”

“In a few weeks, he’ll have a transplant. He was lucky enough to find a donor that matched his size and blood type.”

“Call him, please. And ask him where he is.”

Baro took out his phone and dialed the number. “Ah… Jinyoung-ah. Where are you? … Okay… are you staying there for long? … Okay… No… No need… I have to go now… bye.”

“He’s at Dokibu Coffee Shop,” Baro said and Hyuna nodded as she excused herself.

-

He wasn’t in the first floor of the coffee shop. He was on the second floor. He sat there in the corner, the very corner where they first met. He was on his Macbook, looking agitated he navigated through it. For Hyuna, it was déjà vu, but an extremely pleasant type of déjà vu.

She walked up and stood there behind him. He felt her shadow and then looked behind him. Surprised to see her, he was completely dumbstruck.

She took a seat next to him. “Do you need help with your Macbook?”

“Command option escape,” he responded.

“What?”

“Command option escape,” he repeated, seeming so much more agitated then he was the first time. He then closed his lid, grabbed the laptop and began scurrying away.

“Jung Jinyoung you are not escaping me,” she said striding towards him and grabbing his arm. “Please, let’s talk.”

“I have nothing to say to you!” he yelled in utter distress. It was so uncharacteristic of him to yell like that. It was so uncharacteristic of him to show any signs of agitation. “I thought I dealt with you four months ago. Just leave me alone and stop haunting me,” he pulled his arm away from her grip and began to walk away.

“You can’t leave me! Not after everything you’ve done to me,” Hyuna said softly, making Jinyoung stop walking and turn around.

“Hyuna-ssi…” he said regretfully, “I want you to stop talking to me. Stop trying to find me please.”

“Why do you want that?”

“Don’t you know?”

“No. I don’t understand. I read the article you wrote about me. The real article.”

“Baro,” Jinyoung muttered in annoyance.

“Why did you agree to publish the mean article under your name? Why didn’t you tell me about your disease? Why did you kick me out of your life? Why did you hurt me?”

“Do you still love me?” Jinyoung asked out of nowhere.

“Of course I do.”

Jinyoung sighed and then said, “command option escape isn’t working.”

“What?”

“Help me with my Macbook,” he repeated. “Command option escape isn’t working.”

He walked back to their table in the corner opened up the computer. Hyuna sat there beside him, stunned that he still would ask her to help him with his Macbook after all that had just happened.

After he put in his password, he just stared at his desktop. He put his hands on his lap and put his head down.

“Jinyoung-ssi?”

She saw a tear fall from his eyes and land on his hand. This was the first time she’d seen him cry and suddenly she felt helpless. She didn’t know what to do, or how to console him, or why he was even crying.

“Oppa,” she continued. It felt nice to call him that again, to call him in a way that suggests that they were close and intimate. A wave of nostalgia hit her suddenly and she put her hand around him. “I love you.”

He kissed her forehead and hugged her back burying his face in her hair. “You don’t smell like apples anymore,” he stated with a sniffle.

“I will next time.”

He pulled away from the hug just enough to look into her eyes. He held her gaze for a moment before leaning in to kiss her lips.

-

She found herself hitting him repeatedly on his chest when he explained it all to her.

It was just like Shinwoo reasoned kicking Gongchan out of his life. To him, she was too in love with him. He wanted to make her hate him. He wanted to kick her out of his life. He wanted to detach her from him so that he wouldn’t hold her down. That’s why he let that article be published under his name.

“I’m sorry babe,” he said with all sincerity. “I’m sorry that I’m going to die, and that I’m going to leave you alone. I can’t keep my promise to stay with you forever. I’m going to make you so sad when I die.”

“Please don’t talk about that,” she said, feeling her the itch of her nose threatening to make her burst out crying any minute now. “We’ve already wasted four months.”

“I’m sorry for doing that. I’m sorry for hurting you. I never want to do it ever again,” Jinyoung said.

“Don’t apologize. Let’s not linger in the past and live for what time we have left.”

“Yes,” Jinyoung nodded with a smile, “if this lung transplant is successful, I might even be lucky enough to have three more years. And then I’ll get another and another and another until I live to be 100.”

“But you can only get a lung transplant once.”

“Aish, look at you being all pessimistic. Let us all dream babe,” he said as he pushed her playfully.

“I’m sorry.”

“Listen babe. Maybe those scientists in the Silicosis department would have found a cure this this ty killjoy disease by the time the three years pass.”

Hyuna smiled as this newfound hope, “I love you Jinyoung-oppa.”

“Thanks babe.”

-

“Oppa, where are we going?” she asked as he picked her up from her workplace at the Apple Store.

“We’re going to eat at some random- restaurant in this ty mall,” he said, taking her hand. “And you’re going to teach me some more Macbook shenanigans.”

“Ugh, can’t we have one date without your Macbook?” she pouted.

“Nah. You date me, you date my Macbook. It’s a two-package deal.”

She sighed in amusement as she held his hand and walked with him. He took her into Applebees and they sat in front of the one another other.

“What’s the shortcut for minimizing?” he asked, staring intently at his screen.

“Command M.”

“Selecting all the text?”

“Command A.”

“Aligning the text to the right?”

“Command R.”

“Command what?”

“Command R,” she repeated.

“Then what’s redo?”

“Command Y.”

“Wait, what was minimizing again?”

“Command M.”

“What about centering text?”

“Command E.”

Jinyoung stared at his Macbook for a while, blinking twice. “Aish, you’re so demanding,” he said with and exaggerated cringe.

“What?”

He turned his screen and showed her his notes:

Cmd M

Cmd A

Cmd R

Cmd R

Cmd Y

Cmd M

Cmd E

She looked at the letters and read them again, just to make sure she wasn’t imagining them. Jinyoung watched her nervously, trying to keep up his sarcastic face. She then looked at him and smiled as her lower lip trembled. She got off her chair, went around the table towards him, wrapping her arms around him as she squeezed him. “Yes, yes, yes!” she agreed wholeheartedly.

“Aish, alright, I’ll marry you,” Jinyoung said sarcastically, trying to look annoyed, but there was a smile on his face he was unable to suppress. “You commanding little girlfriend you. Commanding me to kiss you on your first date and now you want me to marry you one day after we made up. Oh right, and here’s the ring that I prepared just in case you commanded me to marry you.” He took her right hand and put the ring on her wedding finger before bringing her hand to his lips and kissing it.

When she looked at the ring she smiled and hugged him again.

There, carved on to the ring, was the Apple logo.

-

They got married the next day. There was no fancy wedding, no guests. Just them at the chapel for half an hour, and later signing the legal papers together in her apartment. It was only two days before his lung transplant; the transplant they both were so sure would succeed in getting him at least one more year to live.

-

The day of the transplant, they woke up in each other’s arms feeling happy. They were hopeful, optimistic, and they just knew it was going to be a good day. They went to the hospital together that day.

“Hello Jung Jinyoung-ssi,” the doctor greeted him at the front desk. The doctor was a pleasant man with a childish face and a kind bright smile. “Your donor is already drugged and in the room. You will be drugged for five hours, and the operation will take two hours. You will be required to stay in the hospital room for three days after that before being discharged.”

“Three days? Aish, I don’t have time to spend life in this -hole. Sandeul-ah, let me get off earlier…”

“I will talk to the nurse and we’ll arrange getting you out in two,” the doctor winked at Jinyoung. “Anyways, at this point, non-patients are not allowed. So say goodbye to your…”

“My wife,” Jinyoung said proudly to the doctor.

“Wife?”

“We got married yesterday,” Jinyoung informed him.

“Oh, okay,” the doctor said, looking apprehensive, “Mrs. Jung, please come back in about ten hours, when the slumbering effects of the drugs wear off and Jinyoung wakes up.”

She nodded and then turned to him. “Fighting, Jinyoung-oppa!”

“Fighting my ,” he said as he put his arms around her waist and brought her closer. He put his mouth on hers and kissed her passionately. He pulled away slightly and put his forehead against hers looking into her eyes amorously.

“I love you.”

“Thank you babe.”

“Come out safely, okay?”

“I will; don’t worry about me.”

He kissed her forehead and hugged her for a long time before they finally parted.

“See you later babe,” he told her, smiling at her brightly as Doctor Sandeul led him into the surgery ward.

-

He didn’t make it.

The doctors had made a grave mistake and the transplant not only failed, but it killed both Jinyoung and the donor.

Hyuna was working in the Apple Store when she first heard. She had only a few minutes ago bought a brand new Macbook, a Macbook she had planned to gift Jinyoung with for making it through the operation. This was a Macbook that didn’t slow down his programs and cause them to not respond, a Macbook in which he wouldn’t need the command option escape function, a Macbook with 6GB memory space, 4.0 GHz Intel Core, 1TB available disk space.

She received a call from an unknown number, and immediately recognized the voice of Doctor Sandeul.

When he broke it to her, she dropped her phone. She couldn’t feel her legs anymore. She couldn’t feel anything anymore. She collapsed right there in the middle of the Apple Store. She felt her heart physically contracting within her chest. The world around her blackened in an instant.

She put her hand on her heart, as if that would alleviate the pain she suddenly felt in her chest. No air entered her lungs, and for a moment she really did forget how to breathe.

-

He wasn’t supposed to die like this, she thought. He was supposed to die a year or two from now, from his disease. He was supposed to die in his hospital bed, me by his side. I was supposed to have prepared myself for it. I was supposed to have known when he was going to die. It wasn’t supposed to be like this.

It took two days for Hyuna to finally get herself together. She couldn’t take care of herself, and so her co-worker, Gayoon, offered to house her for as long as she needed.

It struck Hyuna then how lonely she was. She had no one. She had no family. She had no friends, and she now had no husband. The person who is taking care of her is someone she barely knew outside of work.

When she finally gained the capacity to stop crying, she went to see Jinyoung’s body before the funeral the next day. She was led by Doctor Sandeul towards the morgue, and his body was wheeled towards her, covered in a white sheet. Gayoon was following close behind her. Doctor Sandeul stood to the side alongside Gayoon as Hyuna uncovered his face.

There he was, pale, cold and lifeless. Dead. Although he wasn’t alive, there was somewhat of a grin etched across his face. She smiled through her tears. She could almost hear him say: “hey babe, you smell like apples today.”

It hit her that she would ever get o hear him say that ever again and her smile faded. She kissed his ice cold forehead and hugged him as he she cried and cried. Doctor Sandeul and Gayoon left the room at one point, leaving her alone for the last time with her husband.

“Oppa, your body is so cold,” she said a she wiped her tears with her sleeve. “Oppa, I miss you. It’s been only two days, but I miss seeing hearing you call me ‘babe’. I miss teaching you Macbook shortcuts. I didn’t think it could hurt so much when you die. I didn’t think I would feel so alone. How am I supposed to live now, oppa? How? The whole world misunderstands me. The whole world hates me. You were the only one that understood me and now you’re gone…” she stopped talking to shed more tears and wiped her face with his sleeve.

She heard a knock on the door. It was Gayoon, “Hyuna-ssi, Doctor Sandeul needs to take the body back. A dead body can’t stay out of preservation for long,” she said with remorse.

Hyuna nodded. She kissed his dead lips once more before storming into Gayoon’s arms. Gayoon hugged her back, her hair and whispering words of comfort in her ear.

-

Hyuna thought she had it together for the funeral. She practiced her speech many times, until she was finally able to do it without breaking down. Gayoon helped her through it and gave her the encouragement she needs to persevere.

The funeral was a joint funeral, combining that of Jinyoung and his donor. They were to be buried at the same time, right beside one another.

When Hyuna saw the donor’s name, all possibility of her containing herself disseminated. Shik Gongchan. She looked at his face, and she broke down again.

Gongchan had been the donor and she did not know it.

That perpetually bright face was replaced with a dead one. He looked like an entirely different person without that cheerfulness and color. He was pale. His once glowing eyes were now veiled behind his colorless eyelid. His lips, which had once always been slightly curved into a smile, were not anymore.

She couldn’t deliver the speech. She couldn’t do anything that day. She made it onto the podium. But when she opened to speak, nothing came out.

-

She stayed with Gayoon for three more weeks before she got over the deaths enough to be able to fend for herself. She decided that she was going back to her own apartment then, and to stop burdening Gayoon with taking care of her.

“Thank you unnie, for being here,” Hyuna said to her friend, “without you, I would literally be dead.”

Gayoon held both of Hyuna’s hands and squeezed them, “anytime. Stay strong, okay? And if you ever need someone to talk to, I’m always here, alright?”

Hyuna nodded and hugged Gayoon with all of her might.

“Hyuna, one more thing,” Gayoon said as she reached under a table and grabbed a bag. “Doctor Sandeul gave me this to give to you when you recover a little bit. He told me Jinyoung-ssi gave it to him to give to you once he passes.”

Hyuna took the bag tentatively and thanked Gayoon again.

-

She opened the bag a few days after she got it. She didn’t want to open it right away, afraid it would bring back memories of him, and she didn’t want that. She wanted to move on, and remembering him would only bring her down. Plus, she had only recently recovered enough to stop crying over him. She didn’t want to cry again.

Inside the bag were his Macbook, his wedding ring, and a letter.

She opened the letter first.

Hey babe.

The password is: “Apple$ucks”   (it really does )

Go to: /Users/Jinyoung/Documents/Babe Stuffsss/letter to babe.docx

She opened the laptop and wrote in the password. There, she saw many of Jinyoung’s documents open. She went through them. Most of them were incomplete political articles that he was writing about Syria. Hyuna couldn’t help but feel nostalgic as she went through them. She sensed that she could start crying, but she held them in and stayed strong. The incomplete sentences, all of the notes he wrote to himself, and the list of sources he hade made note of to refer to later. These were the articles that Jinyoung would have been working on if he were still alive. She found it sad that these articles were doomed to be incomplete forever.

As she navigated through the Mac to get to the specified file, the computer froze and one of the running programs stopped responding. She couldn’t help but laugh. She felt his presence around her. She could hear his voice telling her to not force quit anything. She didn’t force quite anything. She waited a few minutes and the program responded on its own.

She opened the file.

“Dear babe,

So if you’re reading this, it means I’ve ascended into the high heavens. But let me just tell you something babe, although I’m dead, I’m still watching you. If I see you cry a lot over me, I’ll be very angry and I’ll tell all them angels up there to curse you with bad luck. Don’t cry. I hate seeing you cry. I feel weak and helpless and stuff.

Heaven’s nice by the way. The apples there taste pretty yummy. They’re all juicy and sugary and small wonder that prophet Adam betrayed God and ate that apple when God told him not to. They are delicious. More delicious then anything that company Apple can ever produce.

Anyways, I give you my Macbook. You can have it. It’s yours. It’s a pretty present, I know, but hey without it, we wouldn’t have met. We wouldn’t have had our first kiss. We wouldn’t have met again after not seeing each other for four months. We wouldn’t have gotten married. So believe it or not, no matter how I think it is, it’s still very special to me because it brought me to you.

Okay, look at me being all romantic and . I don’t do romance. Romance is too fluffy for a cool guy like me.

Anyways, we’ll meet again. Heaven exists, and we’ll see each other there in a little while. So live your life babe. Go find yourself a nice man. (Doctor Sandeul’s pretty cute. I think I’d go gay for him. Strongly recommend him for you babe.) Go get kids and stuff. And go find yourself a modeling job and quit that job you have working in the Apple Store (unless you like it of course).

So yeah, that’s really all I have to say. Oh wait. There’s something I’ve always wanted to tell you, but I never really could because I’m quite the bastard. Here, decode the next page.”

She scrolled to the next page and this was what she saw:

The first one is italicized. The second one is a different language. The third one is an O. The fourth is pasted. The fifth is centered. The last is underlined. She knew exactly how to decode his message: Macbook shortcuts.

Cmd I

Cmd L
        O
Cmd V
Cmd E

Cmd U

-

A/N: I hope you enjoyed it! Please tell me what you thought!

I might write an epilogue to this later, but for now, this is the end! :)