“Ah, how I missed the daily reminders that I’m a literal .”

                Jiyong didn’t even check the phone when the text alert first came; he wasn’t expecting it to be from Seunghyun. When he finally checked it, ten minutes had passed and Jiyong was afraid that Seunghyun wouldn’t still be able to talk.

                “WTF it’s you! How are you???” Jiyong sent the message frantically, his eyes wide with anticipation as he stared at the phone. Megatron pumped loud breaths in and out of his lungs for him, and Jiyong was glad, because he was sure that if he hadn’t been attached to the machine he would’ve been hyperventilating. It didn’t take Seunghyun long at all to reply.

                “Fine. Only vomited once today, so that’s a plus.” Jiyong winced, but he was just happy to know Seunghyun was alive.

                “Bummer. Did you sleep a lot? Did you get my messages? You should really eat ice chips. It helps, somehow,” Jiyong had a million questions, but he didn’t want to bombard the guy right away. Besides, it always annoyed him when people asked him a million of those questions.

                “Yeah, I got all 50 thousand of them. Ice chips made me sick.”

                “Everything will for a while,” Jiyong didn’t like that Seunghyun was going through the ty stuff. He should’ve been there for him, instead of attached to that stupid machine. He had planned to be there for him.

                “I’m finding that out. Sorry I didn’t reply sooner. ty week. But I think I’m getting the swing of this chemo .”

                “Are you at home? Can you talk?”

                “Yup. And sure, I’ll call you.” Ji stared at the text for a second, and then he shot up, hanging off of the bed to grab his oxygen tank. He didn’t want to talk to Seunghyun with that thing on his face. The phone rang before he could get a good grip on the tank.

                “!” he exclaimed, abandoning the tank and scrambling for the phone instead. He winced as he opened the lock screen, and he held the phone to his face. “… Seunghyun?”

                “Yes, I’ll have a large Coke, a Whopper and a medium fry,” Seunghyun teased as soon as Ji answered the phone. Ji couldn’t fight his smile.

                “Shut up… I can’t reach my oxygen tank,” Ji responded, reaching for the tank again.

                “I missed you,” Seunghyun said. Jiyong’s heart skipped and his face blushed behind his CPAP mask, and suddenly nothing else mattered.

                “I missed you, too…” the line went silent for a while. “Seunghyun?”

                “Yeah. Yeah, I’m here… “

                “You sound tired.”

                “You’re observant. You and I are in a similar predicament. I’m confined to my bedroom, too,” Seunghyun sighed softly; Jiyong smiled again. “What makes you think I let my mom check my messages?”

                “Huh? … Oh, I dunno. I thought if… you were like… having a bad reaction like I did, maybe your parents would see that someone kept calling you and call me back,” Ji bit his lip, listening to Seunghyun move and breathe on the other end, and he winced when he heard him groan a little. “Are you okay?”

                “Yeah. You don’t have to ask me if I’m okay,”

                “I know… It’s annoying, right?... You’re not in pain, are you?” Jiyong knew how annoying all of those questions could be. They were the same questions everyone always threw at him. He knew it was annoying, but he never had a reason to ask them to someone else before. Now, he cared enough to ask.

                “Just a little. It’s not serious. Don’t get all sentimental on me,” Seunghyun chucked a little. Ji smiled again.

                “Don’t tell me what to do,” Ji sat back, feeling a weird sense of calm happiness wash over him. The worries he’d had all week were relieved, and honestly, hearing Seunghyun’s voice made everything seem so much better. “Can I come see you?”

                “I don’t know. Can you breathe?... I mean, don’t you have to be attached to your… machine thing?”

                “No. Well, yeah, but so what? I’ll just use the oxygen tank,” Ji didn’t care about following some doctor’s orders. Now that he knew Seunghyun was okay, all he wanted to do was see him in person. He wanted to look at all of those gorgeous smiles of Seunghyun’s, and he wanted to push his fingers into those deep dimples and through his pretty black hair. That is, if he still had his hair. “Did you cut your hair off, or are you just going to wait for it to fall out?”

                “Hahaha. How did I know you were going to ask that? They cut it off on Monday. It was my choice… I thought bald would be ier than patchy.” Seunghyun sounded cheery for a guy who just lost all his hair. It made Jiyong happy.

                “Gross. I only liked you because you had nice hair. I can’t run my fingers through scalp,” Jiyong teased, amusing Seunghyun. His laugh was like listening to music; energizing and entertaining. Jiyong was in heaven.

                “I knew it. I guess this is goodbye, then?” Seunghyun asked playfully.

                “Couldn’t possibly kiss a bald guy,” Ji blushed as soon as the words left his lips. They hadn’t talked since the kiss. Jiyong wasn’t sure if bringing it up was a good idea or not.

                “Horribly shallow. Just the way I remember you,” Seunghyun sighed. “I think my baldness is not the major reason that kissing me wouldn’t be fun right now.”

                “Mmm… I can just kiss your nose instead,” Ji replied softly; shyly. Seunghyun chuckled a little, and then the line went silent for a moment. Jiyong was beginning to wonder if Seunghyun was having second thoughts about the kiss, but then he spoke.

                “My lips might get jealous,” he sounded just as shy as Jiyong had; it was adorable. Ji grinned behind his CPAP mask, trying his best not to sound as if that response made him too happy.

                “We wouldn’t want that, would we?” Ji’s smile was apparent in his tone, as much as he fought it. Seunghyun chuckled a little, and then he sighed.

                “I won’t have treatments tomorrow. I’ll just be at home resting… so if you come…”

                “Are you telling me this so that I’ll kiss you?” Ji .

                “No. If I want a kiss I’ll just take one,” Seunghyun replied matter-of-factly. “Anyway, my doctor said I’ll just be doing treatments three times a week. On chemo days, I’ll probably not be ... able to talk much, but on the in between days, if you don’t have to stay on your machine, you can visit. I mean, I’d come there, but I’m not sure if I’ll vomit all over your house.”

                “Has it been that bad?” Ji frowned. He knew how chemo was. It was physically draining and it made you feel like and it wasn’t at all fun. He just hated imagining that stuff happening to Seunghyun.

                “It’s been alright, I guess. I mean, I don’t have anything to compare it to. But, I’ve been … sleeping, mostly. Got really sick the first day, but like I said, I’m getting the hang of it. My nurse gave me this nausea bracelet,” he chuckled, “I dunno if it really works or not. It’s probably a placebo. But I feel… okay, I guess.”

                “That …. Yeah, they gave me a nausea bracelet, too. I think it helps. It’s some kind of acupressure thing,” Ji sighed. “If it gets bad, on lollipops. Or you can sip ginger tea.”

                “Yeah. I’ve been told all of that stuff. I’m scared to try it, though. I’m not really fond of ingesting anything right now,” he chuckled a little; Ji understood completely. “I’m glad you called me so many times. Your messages made me feel better.”

                “Did they? I thought you would think they were stupid,” Ji smiled to himself.

                “They were. That’s why I liked them. I knew that I could look forward to coming home and listening to some really stupid voicemail from Ji, even if the day was ty as hell,” Seunghyun chuckled lightly. “But they were also … really nice. And thoughtful. And some of them made me feel really sorry, because I hadn’t called you back.”

                “You . If you could listen to voicemail, you could text,” Ji scoffed, although Megatron made it sound more like a cough-cackle.

                “It would seem that way, but alas, I was very out of it,” Seunghyun explained. “To listen to the voicemail, I just had to press a button. That was about as far as my brain would let me go. I’d listen, and then I’d fall asleep.”

                “Aww. I should’ve come to take care of you,” Ji lamented. Seunghyun laughed.

                “But you’re a cripple,”

                “That’s ableism,”

                “No it’s not. You’re not disabled. And anyway, your problem and my problem are the same problem,” Seunghyun insisted.

                “Actually, with my lungs in this state, I actually do count as disabled. Therefore, you’re being an insensitive prick,” Jiyong retorted, though he was mostly kidding.

                “I stand corrected. And also, I think I should clarify that I have absolutely no problem with you coming to see me, but that I could never ask you to take care of me because you aren’t well, yourself. It just wouldn’t be right,”

                “I think I should point out that you did your fair share of taking care of me even though you are riddled with leukemia,” Jiyong replied.

                “How is one ‘riddled’ with leukemia? You can’t be ‘riddled’ with something like leukemia. You make it sound like the chicken pox,” Seunghyun argued. “Besides, I wasn’t down for the count, yet. I was still pretty… able-bodied, I guess. Like, right now, I don’t know if I’d be carrying you down some hallway like before.”

                “Lazy bastard. How could I ever depend on you?” Jiyong smiled when Seunghyun laughed again. “I missed you so much. Nobody gets my humor.”

                “Nobody? Damn, thanks. Guess I’m nobody,” Seunghyun joked.

                “No, I mean nobody else, ,” Jiyong chuckled. “My sister hates it. She says I’m cynical and dark. That’s why she lives in California. All the palm trees and celebrities protect her from her ridiculously cynical and dying younger brother.”

                “Your sister, I’m sorry to say, is missing out on greatness,”

                “That is the nicest thing anyone has ever said about me,” Jiyong blushed, and Seunghyun just chuckled. The two of them fell silent again, and Jiyong listened to Seunghyun’s breathing on the other end. “Anyway… that was sweet.”

                “I probably shouldn’t have said it like that…”

                “You can’t just call someone ‘greatness’ and then take it back, Top.”

                “I’m not taking it back. I’m just… embarrassed? Because now you know that I think you’re great, and I don’t even know if you think I’m great.” Seunghyun seemed like he was rambling, which was unlike him. Jiyong hesitated a little.

                “Are you on meds right now?”

                “… Yes. But that’s not why I said that,” Seunghyun laughed. “I can admit that I think you’re great … without being on drugs.”

                “I dunno. I don’t think you’d have said that if you weren’t on meds,” Jiyong sighed. “You’re sort of… you sound a little medicated, that’s all.”

                “Okay… So, I won’t tell you anything else. Go ahead. Ask me anything, and I won’t tell you,” Seunghyun offered.

                “I’m not playing this game, nope,”

                “… I’m really just trying to move the conversation along, so that it stops feeling like I just got rejected,” Seunghyun paused a moment. “So, you should probably say something.”

                “You think I’m … I’m not rejecting you, you big baby. I just told you I wanted to kiss you. I don’t kiss boys I’m rejecting,”

                “Well, you didn’t kiss anyone before me, so, how am I supposed to know what your kiss reasoning is?”

                “… I like you. And, yes, I think you’re great. Are you happy, now?”

                “Very. Now tell me you were lost without me and were waiting for my call with bated breath,”

                “So… your ego? Nah, no thanks,” Ji chuckled. Seunghyun did, too. “You’re really an . I don’t understand myself for liking you.”

                “I’m not at all. I’m a nice boy who genuinely likes you,” Seunghyun insisted, feigning innocence. Jiyong laughed a little, but honestly, hearing those words from Seunghyun made him especially happy.

                “I think you’re just trying to make me smile.”

                “I live to make you smile. Is it working?” he asked.

                “I… refuse to answer any questions that will further incriminate me,” Jiyong deflected playfully.

                “Pleading the Fifth, I see. Well, I’ll just take that as a ‘yes’,” Seunghyun responded as if he was Sherlock Holmes for figuring out such an obvious truth.

                “OMMA!” Jiyong yelled from his bedroom, coughing as soon as he did. He had taken off his CPAP and attached himself to his oxygen tank, and was seated on the floor in from of his bookshelf, looking through his collection of graphic novels for good titles he could bring to Seunghyun. He hadn’t gotten permission from his parents to visit Seunghyun, because he knew that if he asked, he’d have gotten shot down. Instead, he took his normal bath, got dressed in real clothes, and started preparing to leave. His mother rushed in the room in a panic, nearly jumping out of her skin when she saw her son on the floor.

                “Jiyong-ah! WHAT HAPPEN?” she rushed over to him, attempting to pick him up. Jiyong frowned.

                “Stop, I’m fine,” he sighed, pushing himself up. “I can’t find my Watchmen graphic novel. Do you know where I left it?” His mother sighed deeply, relieved that nothing was wrong, and she latched onto her son, prepared to him back to bed.

                “If you want your comic book you should ask for help. I can get books down for you,” she told him gently, but she stopped when he wouldn’t walk with her to the bed. “Wae? You have to rest in bed.”

                “I’m going to Seunghyun’s,” Jiyong announced, clutching a few graphic novels and comic books in his arms. “These are for him. I wanna give him something to read while he’s at home.”

                “What?... Seunghyun? Nugu?” his mother didn’t seem to remember who he was even talking about. Jiyong hesitated, unsure of how to make his mom remember without embarrassing himself. “Your kiss friend?”

                “Uh… um, yeah,” Jiyong blushed, looking away from her, pretending that he wasn’t completely mortified by that.

                “You can’t go today. You still sick. Maybe next week. We can go together,” she dismissed the idea, attempting to lead him back to the bed again. Jiyong shook his head.

                “Omma… Telling, not asking. I said I’m going. I didn’t ask for permission,” he stated, although telling his parents that it was his decision still felt a bit strange. “I can drive, so…”

                “Ande! You can’t go. You too sick, Jiyong-ah,” she replied sternly. He rolled his eyes. “YA! Don’t do that! So, you think that will make me let you go?”

                “Mom, I’m not even sick! I can breathe just fine with the tank, and I can walk without help, now. Seunghyun is at his house and I want to bring him some things, that’s all. It won’t even take me long,” Jiyong argued. His mom crossed her arms, frowning at him. He could tell that she didn’t like the idea at all. It probably felt like he was being defiant or hard-headed, to her. “I’ll come right back, okay?”

                “You just want to go so you can kiss that boy again. I know. You like him, but you being so foolish. What happen if you can’t breathe? Just to kiss that boy, you go and you can’t breathe?” She fussed. His mom didn’t fuss at him often. Jiyong couldn’t tell if she was upset that he was going somewhere while he was supposed to be on bed rest, or if it was because she thought he wanted to kiss Seunghyun. Before, she seemed as if she didn’t really care that he liked Seunghyun.

                “I’m not being foolish… And so what if I want to kiss him? You said you didn’t care,” he replied, frustrated. “Is it because I like him that you don’t want me to go?”

                “No. I don’t want you to put him before your health,” she replied, shaking her head. “I only have one son. I don’t care he go to see a boy he like. I care he too sick to leave, because the doctor say he too sick to leave. I only care you get so sick and have to go back to hospice.”

                “I won’t get sick… All I’m doing is driving to Seunghyun’s, giving him some stuff to read, hanging out for a minute and leaving,” he paused, eyeing her. “Don’t worry so much, okay? If I feel like I’m not alright, I’ll come home. Okay?”

               “You make me so worry, Jiyong…” she sighed, her eyes studying him as if she would find a reason to make him stay. “Arasso. If you want to, go see your friend. But don’t stay long. Okay?”

                “Ne, Omma,” he nodded, and he kissed her on the cheek. “But… Watchmen? Have you seen it?”

                “Maybe in your bag from the hospital,” she replied. “I will look…” She took a moment to look at him again before she headed through his bedroom door. He sighed when she left, shaking his head. He wished he’d just left without telling her where he was going. It wasn’t fair that he had to ask permission, and beg to go places, just because he was sick. He shuffled towards his bed, placing the comics at the foot of it, and he grabbed the burlap bag that his sister had given to him. Dumping the new books that she’d brought him out onto his bed, he replaced them with the books that he was planning to bring to Seunghyun. Then, he shuffled to his night stand, and opened the drawer, taking out the remaining  anti-nausea lollipops he had and dropping them into the bag as well. It was the perfect care package to bring to Seunghyun. He was feeling rather proud of it.

                “I found your book,” his mother called to him from the door. He looked at her, then he nodded, shuffling towards her to grab it. “Use your cane, at least,” she sighed.

                “I can walk without it,” he commented, taking the book from her. She shook her head firmly.

                “Get. The cane.” She insisted. He chuckled a little, grabbing the thing from the wall behind the door.

                “Happy?” he asked, smiling at her before kissing her cheek lightly. “I’ll come home in a few … hours, maybe.”

                “… Alright. Then, have fun,” she looked worried, but she didn’t stop him, so Jiyong didn’t bother to comfort her again. Honestly, he was just too happy to have freedom to care. With his oxygen tank on his back, and his cane in one hand and the bag in the other, he headed to the front door. It had been a while since he’d driven himself anywhere, and had he not taken the initiative to visit Seunghyun, it would’ve probably been even longer before he drove again. Seeing Seunghyun was exciting in itself, but having the freedom to actually go as he pleased felt almost surreal; like, maybe he had some semblance of a real life, again. It was one of a growing list of reasons he was glad to know Seunghyun.

AN: So, Seunghyun is back!! I was missing him, myself, so I had to bring him back for this chapter, lol. He won't be MIA very much at all in the next chapters, so yay! These last posts, I got a lot of really great comments and gained a bunch of new subscribers! Wow! I mean, it's been good the whole time, but I just really appreciate everyone who reads, subscribes, and comments! It's so good to know that so many of you are touched by this story. I looove your comments and things, it makes me feels so great. Even if you read and don't comment, I appreciate you, too! I appreciate all of you. Thanks, guys! So, happy times are coming next! Stay tuned~