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Their chests rise and fall together. Irregularly, like the beating of a trapped bird’s wings, their hearts stutter out the rhythm of their life. Too young to die, but too damaged to live, they cling to one another in their world of whitewashed walls and sterile sheets and the empty beeping of the cold machines. A purring suffuses the room at all times; radiating outwards like a blanket from the sleeping monitor, it settles over them like death, quiet and unassuming. Frozen in identical beds, they are separated by a small gap between the metal frames but their hands reach for one another and meet, clasp tightly together in the middle. Their eyes are screwed shut and they are utterly immobile, but they fight back desperately with each gasping breath, a monumental effort.

Thus do Kyungsoo and Luhan wage their war, the infant twins with half a lung each and one shared heart, cleaved apart at birth. Yet even the heart must give in at some time.

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