He had only spent a few hours at Seunghyun’s, but his parents seemed to be on edge waiting for his return. It was times like this that Jiyong wished for a normal teenage body; one that would allow him to sneak in and dart to his bedroom without being detected. Instead, he hobbled through the door and paused to catch his breath, giving his overprotective parents ample time to rush to him and immediately check his vitals as if he were a corpse on one of those crime drama shows.

                “How is your breathing? Your lungs?” his father asked before even greeting him, his mother taking his cane and holding onto him as if he were moments away from collapsing. He frowned, trying to wriggle from her grasp but instead being escorted into the kitchen.

                “Um…fine? I’m fine. Relax,” he replied, his parents hovering over him as he sat at the table.

                “We were so worried, Jiyong-ah. You stayed so long. You should have called home,” his mother scolded him.

                “I wasn’t even gone that long,” Jiyong thought of making a sarcastic comment about dying but he knew that his parents wouldn’t find it funny or charming, so he kept it to himself. His mother sighed, staring at him as if he had been rescued from some grave danger. The melodrama was really getting tiring. “I never hang out with friends. Just one time, I hang out with a friend and you guys are acting like something bad happened.”

                “You are still sick, Jiyong-ah! Anything could have happen to you!” his father yelled, but he stopped himself, and he let out a short sigh, brushing his hand over Jiyong’s hair. “Okay. Maybe we overreacting, but we just worried. Our Jiyongie isn’t well. You have to get a little better before we stop worry so much.” Jiyong rolled his eyes, though he didn’t mean to disrespect his father. The older man sighed, but he smiled a little. “Okay. I know, it so annoying, right?”

                “It’s not that it’s annoying, appa. I just want to be a normal teenager for once. Sometimes I feel like I’m 7 years old or something,” he replied, and bracing himself on the table, he stood up from the chair his mother had sat him in. “I just wanna go crash in my room.”

                “Let omma help you, Jiyong-ah,” his mother rushed to his side again; Jiyong fought the urge to roll his eyes and smiled at her instead.

                “Thank you,” he replied respectfully, even though he didn’t think he really needed her help. He and his mother walked silently to the bedroom, which had been located on the first floor of the house for the past few years despite Jiyong’s protesting. It was easier, his parents and doctors insisted, for them to access him when he needed help and for him to get to when he wasn’t strong enough to walk up stairs (or at all.)

                His mother seemed to linger when he got to the room and she watched him closely as he sat down on the bed. He’d gotten used to his parents hovering over him; in fact, there was hardly a time when they weren’t hovering; but for some reason her gaze felt intense and Jiyong was beginning to feel anxious. He glanced at her, and she smiled. He smiled back – reluctant and confused.

                “Arasso,” she smiled, chuckling to herself. “You just seem so light today.”

                “Light?”

                “Mmm. You seem happy. And you don’t seem so dark. So- oh, what do you call? Cynical?” she smiled and closed the door, sitting beside Jiyong on the bed. “I just like it. You seem so happy.”

                “Eh… Do I?” He blushed, despite his best efforts to show no reaction. “Some say I’m rather bitter, you know…” he commented; insisted.

                “Aniyo. You’re not bitter, but had a hard time,” she replied with eyes that examined his face with a knowingness that only mothers have. “So, you had fun with your new friend?” He could feel his face blushing again; that familiar warm feeling of the blood rushing to his cheeks. He rubbed at them in futility and his bottom lip pulled under his front teeth. Jiyong could hear the silence getting louder the longer he took to reply, and the muffled sound of his father watching the evening news in the living room was hardly enough of a distraction.

                His mother’s arm slid around his shoulder and stayed there, and the pair just sat in the almost-silence for a few moments. She didn’t pry or push any further, but Jiyong felt as if she knew, somehow. Or if she hadn’t known then, she would know in the near future. Besides that, it hardly meant anything. It was only a kiss. Jiyong still wasn’t sure what that meant or if Seunghyun would ultimately amount to anything more than a typical cancer friend. They weren’t, like, married, or anything.

                “We… um, just played on XBOX,” he began shyly; out of character for Jiyong at home with his parents, for sure. His mother nodded. Jiyong was always playing video games, so it wasn’t exactly unexpected. “But then, we kind of, like, started talking. Which, ultimately became more interesting than the video game.”

                “That’s good. You need to do more than play that game,” she commented, and she smiled at him as if she were waiting for the rest of the report. Her eyes seemed happy and excited, as if she couldn’t be more pleased with Jiyong’s new friendship. He hesitated a bit.

                “Uhh… um, well, I was really being kind of annoying. Or… like, stupid, because I kept… thinking stupid things and asking stupid questions… you know, like I do…” Jiyong bit his lip again, wide-eyed and anxiously stealing quick glances at his mother to gage her attitude. She still seemed happy, still excited, and so Jiyong remembered that he was supposed to not care about these things and that he should just be honest. After all, liking who he liked shouldn’t be a big deal. He took in a deep breath, which was a bad idea because it caused a mini-coughing-fit, and after he’d gotten himself composed again, he proceeded to blurt out the truth. “So, I got kinda upset because I thought something kind of stupid and he made me feel a lot better, so that’s why I’m happy. Because he kissed me and I liked… well, it make me feel better.”

He looked at her immediately, trying his best to figure out if he was about to be scolded or if she would think it wasn’t a big deal. It wasn’t that he thought his parents were especially homophobic or anything, but they were Korean, and he knew that Koreans didn’t always have the best attitudes towards such things. She didn’t seem to react at first, and he wondered if she hadn’t fully understood what he said. She was sort of staring at him; examining him, really; but she didn’t seem to be angry or disgusted. She didn’t seem to be… well, anything.

                “Omma?... I said he kissed me,”

                “Is he your boyfriend?” she asked calmly after a while. Jiyong shrugged.

                “No? … Not really. I dunno,” he blushed again.

                “Was it your first kiss?” she asked. Jiyong wondered what difference it made.

                “Yes,” he replied matter-of-factly, and he pursed his lips under his nose, taking a moment to think before continuing. “It was the first time anyone even wanted to kiss me… So, it made me happy. Don’t be upset.”

                “Aniyo… are you having a coming out, now? Is that what you’re telling me?” she seemed calm, and her arm was still around Jiyong’s shoulder. It could’ve been nice, but for some reason, it was only making Jiyong feel nervous.

                “Omma,” he whined, avoiding that question. It wasn’t that he was ashamed to call himself gay or something. It was more like saying it seemed too official. It was more like this was the most individual, grown-up, real situation he’d experienced in his whole life, besides almost dying. Until then, he’d basically been babied. He’d been treated as a baby, talked to as a baby, and he was pretty sure his parents had him in their minds as a baby. This was his first taste of independence; of true individuality; and he wasn’t sure he was ready; not to ask his parents to accept him as a gay person… not to be something outside of what his parents’ image of him had always been.

                “Son… Omma doesn’t mind it. Really. I’m only happy that you’re happy… I can’t forgive myself, that you’re sick. I can’t forgive it… It’s not my right to tell you not to be happy,” she looked sad as she said those words, or rather like sadness came over her as she thought them. She seemed like she wanted to cry, but was holding back for Ji’s sake.

                “But it’s not your fault that I’m sick. You can’t blame yourself for that,” he frowned. This was the he hated; the sad part. He hated the tears, and the sadness, and he hated watching his parents blame themselves, and he hated that his sister stayed away because it was too depressing, and he hated all of it. “You can yell at me, if you want. If you don’t want me to kiss him anymore, I won’t. It’s okay,” it was childish, but somehow he thought that if he let her be angry that he liked a boy, it would normalize things for her. Instead, his offer only seemed to make things worse. At first, she held her fingers to her lips in an attempt to hold in her emotion, but soon she was crying. As guilty as she felt that he was sick, Jiyong felt guilty, too. His illness had all but ruined his family’s lives.

                “I’m sorry. Please don’t cry, Mom. Really, I don’t have to do it. I haven’t even done it before today, so I don’t have to,” he rambled, trying to comfort her. His hands tried to wipe away her tears, but she shook her head, so he stopped. “… It’s not so bad, though, Mommy… I might still get better, right?”

                “Jiyongie… today we talked again to your doctor. You have to go on a breathing machine, but if your condition doesn’t get better, you have to go back into hospice,” she explained in Korean, her tearful eyes unable to look at her son.

                “Hospice? … But I feel fine. Why did they let me go home, if…” his heart sank. “Am… am I going to die? Is this it?”

                “No… no, but they fear that your breathing will just get worse. Your sarcoma didn’t get a chance to improve with your last stay. Since you seemed stronger, they let you come home where it’s more comfortable, but your doctor is worried about your lung capacity and Monday, they will be setting up your machine. You’ll have to be in your room for a while. If you show improvement, you’ll be able to go around with an oxygen tank, but if not, we’ll have to go back to the hospital.” She gave him the information as clearly and calmly as she could, though the tears still flowed from her eyes. Jiyong didn’t react, at first. He wasn’t upset, and he wasn’t angry. It was just typical. It was the same story he’d been hearing since he fell ill. There was no improvement. They were going to try a new thing. He’d have to go to hospice. It was all so tedious, and frankly, he was growing tired of it.

                “Why can’t I just die, instead? What’s the point of all this if I’m just going to die?” he flopped backwards onto the bed; emotionless and drained.

                “… Every day you stay alive… we can come closer to making you better.” His mother always sounded so hopeful. Somebody had to be, he guessed. She looked him over, and softly, she kissed his forehead. “Omma is sorry you’re sick.”

                “Yeah…” he sighed. He was so happy about his freedom after being released from the hospital and here he was, once again confined to one room. It felt like some kind of sick joke.

                “If you want, you can invite Seunghyun … he can keep you company while you get better,” she offered, his hair lovingly. He looked at her, surprised that she really did seem to be accepting of the Seunghyun thing.

                “He’ll be doing chemo,” he replied, his voice dryer than intended. He mom frowned a little, and she sighed.

                “Oh, how sad… I should talk to his mother,” she replied, scratching the pads of her fingers against Jiyong’s scalp. “Maybe if you have a good day, we can sneak to visit him.” His mother gave him a light smile, insistent that she didn’t mind at all that her son liked a guy. Ji smiled a little.

                “You’re okay with it?” he asked.

                “I like him. Seunghyun,”

                “Yeah, me too.”

                “He seems like nice boy. And makes you smile. It is really good choice. Can I say that?” she chuckled softly, her eyes studying him. “Always be happy, Jiyongie. Make yourself happy first.”

                There were drawbacks to sitting in your bedroom all day, like your can get really sore, and the things in your room can become significantly less interesting over time, but there were also benefits. Like, now Jiyong could finally catch up on the 2^nd season of Arrow, which he’d been too busy being almost-dead to watch first hand on the CW. Hulu Plus and Netflix had become his best friends, and his father had given him a streaming device so that he could watch his shows and movies directly on the TV in his room. The hooded vigilante was busy shooting arrows at some trained assassins from Ra’s al Ghul’s league, which was awesome but Jiyong could barely concentrate on the action due to the nurse and his parents attempting to hook him up to his brand new CPAP machine. Luckily for Jiyong, if you were one to consider any of this ‘lucky’, his doctors had agreed that he could use a tank of oxygen if he needed to leave his bedroom or go out. However, he was still mostly confined to hours of glorious lung rehabilitation attached to his CPAP.

                “So, this mask just goes over his nose and mouth like this,” the nurse explained to his parents, affixing the damned thing to his face. “and the straps go around his forehead here, and around his cheeks here and secure in the back. You want to make sure that it’s tight enough to seal around his nose and mouth, but not so tight that it hurts him or cuts off circulation.” Jiyong sighed into the plastic mask, feeling like some sort of alien experiment. There was a plastic tube that ran from the front of his mask to the CPAP machine that was supposed to pump oxygen into his ty lungs for him. For a moment, Jiyong imagined he was Bane, and he pretended that wearing this thing was just the first step towards destroying Gotham. But he knew he wasn’t Bane. He was a sickly little kid with a breathing machine.

                “Is that comfortable, Ji?” the nurse asked him sweetly. He glanced at the woman, and he shrugged. This was a nurse he’d had before, whenever they sent people to his house to change his nutrition bags or something. She was a nice lady with reddish hair and green eyes, and she reminded Jiyong of a kindergarten teacher. But Jiyong didn’t feel like being treated like a kindergartener, today. He just wanted everyone to off and let him finish watching Arrow.

                “If it’s pressing into your face too tight, you have to let me know so that I can make it more comfortable,” she continued, smiling at him. Her hands went to adjust the mask before Jiyong could even reply. “See? That looked a little tight. Is that better?” It actually was. But he just shrugged again. “I know it’s probably no fun to have to use this machine, huh. But it will help your lungs learn how to breathe better.”

                “My lungs won’t get better. I’ll probably be on this machine til I croak,” Ji replied dryly, his eyes focused on the action on the screen. The nurse didn’t seem taken aback by his comment at all, which annoyed Ji. He wanted a reaction, and he wasn’t getting one.

                “I think they will. You won’t have to use it daily for long. Pretty soon it will just be at night,” she replied just as sweetly as before.

                “I’m sorry. He’s not in a good mood today,” his mother apologized for him. He shot her a glare.

                “Oh, it’s understandable. It can start to seem tedious after a while. A lot of the teens have similar reactions,” the nurse smiled. She reached in her bag, taking out a small spirometer, which she handed to Jiyong’s mother. “Have him breathe into this every morning when he wakes up and before he goes to bed and record his lung capacity in a journal. This is just to give the doctor a good idea of how well he’s breathing. If we can, we want to avoid another surgery.” Jiyong looked up at the nurse at the mention of surgery. As many as he’d had, the idea of them still scared him. There was always talk of “chances of survival” and “recovery time” and it hurt like hell and he had to be drugged up for a while afterwards. Besides that, they never seemed to be fully successful, in his case.

                “Wait, I have to get surgery if this doesn’t work?” he asked; annoyed with the Darth Vader sound of his own voice through that mask. The nurse smiled at him sweetly, shaking her head.

                “Hopefully not. Don’t worry. It’s going to be fine,”

                “Why are you lying to me? … You guys want to take out my lungs, right? Or at least the malignant part,” Jiyong was a reader, and he’d already done ample research on cancers of the lungs. They could replace a cancerous lung with a mechanical one, or take out one lung or part of one, to remove the cancer. His was a particularly complicated case, but he knew that this type of surgery was an option. He’d already had cancerous tissue removed, before.

                “Well, that’s not our first course of action. Right now, we just want to shrink your tumors, and regulate your breathing. Your case isn’t a typical case of lung cancer, since it started in chest tissue and just spread to your lungs, so we’re not approaching it the same way we would for some other cases,” she explained, though, Jiyong felt as if she was just talking around the subject. Basically, it seemed that lung surgery was still an option.

                “Yeah, so when all of this BS fails, I’ll have to have surgery,” he clarified for her, and he focused his attention back on the screen, trying not to react to that notion. He didn’t think he could take much more of this. He wanted to cry, but crying was too easy and didn’t help, so he fought it. Instead, he just rewound the show, and prepared to immerse himself in the issues of Starling City. “You’re making me miss important parts,” he complained superficially.

                “Jiyong-ah,” his father called his name. Jiyong felt a hand on his shoulder, but he didn’t look up. He would cry if someone tried to comfort him. Instead, he just squinted, staring at the TV screen. “Let’s be positive. Maybe this help a lot.”

                “Okay. Can we stop talking about it, now? … I got the machine, now, so can everyone leave me alone?” he was going to cry. He could feel the tears stinging his eyes, and he didn’t want to cry, especially in front of everyone else. He needed them all to leave him alone.

                “Okay. Let’s leave him,” his mother agreed; she could always read him better than anyone else. Besides that, she knew how much he hated getting surgery and that even the prospect probably terrified him.

                “We can go over the rest in your living room,” the nurse nodded, and she smiled at Jiyong again. “It was nice to see you, again.”

                The adults filed out of his bedroom, leaving him attached to the loud breathing machine, and Jiyong closed his eyes tightly, trying not to drop any tears. After a few minutes, he opened his eyes and paused the TV show, and he scooted to the edge of the bed, grabbing his phone from his night stand. He scrolled through his contacts for a while until he landed on Seunghyun’s number. Seunghyun… was in worse shape than he was and wasn’t in any condition to listen to Jiyong’s lamenting. Today was the first day of his chemo. Jiyong had almost forgotten. He sighed, wondering if calling him would’ve been inconsiderate… or if not calling him would’ve been rude. His finger made the decision for him, and before he could stop himself, he was calling Seunghyun.

                After a few rings, Jiyong was sure that Seunghyun wouldn’t pick up, so he just waited for the voicemail.

                “Um…hey, it’s Top. I didn’t answer the phone, so … yeah. Leave a message or something…I’ma be honest, I don’t listen to my voicemail, so… if it’s super urgent, just text me.”

                Jiyong smiled at the sound of his voice and his voicemail greeting. He needed Seunghyun’s wit more than anything. It would’ve made everything seem much less scary.

                “Hey… um… hey. It’s Ji. I know you said you, um, don’t listen to voicemail, and I know today is… well, you’re probably not able to talk on the phone right now. I just really wanted to talk to you, so… I dunno. Anyway, happy first chemo day. When you’re not , like, feeling too crappy, call me. Or, text. Whatever seems easier…. Maybe I’ll come over this week… I mean, I… uh. I kinda got sentenced to my room… and the reason I sound like Darth Vader, uh… well, that’s another story. You should really call me to find out. Ah, , I sound desperate. I’m not desperate. I just… I uh… I needed a friend. Anyway… sleep a lot and eat ice chips. I’ll bring you some lollipops. I use lollipops when I do chemo. I’m rambling. Uh… bye,”

                He laughed a little after he left the voicemail. He could imagine Seunghyun listening to it and making some smart- comment about him being lame, and for some reason that made him happy. He missed Seunghyun. They hadn’t really spoken since Saturday, due to mutual preparation for their respective treatments, and even though it wasn’t a really long time, it felt too long. Maybe he was getting too attached; maybe Seunghyun didn’t even miss talking to him in a couple of days; but he still missed their sarcastic conversations and incomplete video game tournaments. And… honestly, he kind of missed kissing him. 

Author's note: Guys! It's been way too long between updates! I'm so sorry! Sometimes life gets in the way and it's hard to update. Also, I think I was feeling a little disappointed in the last chapter, so I was hesitating on how to continue. Anyway, here's the next add! And thank you to everyone who stuck with me through this hiatus, and thanks to all the new readers and subscribers! Please, guys, leave comments! And I will add again before the week is out.