I thought that after hearing that terrible news, the world would stop; that it would cease to exist, but it didn’t. Everything went on like it normally would. I will be dead in a month yet the days go by like nothing has changed, the sun rises at dawn and sets at dusk; the seconds turn to minutes, then to hours, then to days. A whole week has passed since the day I found out I have leukemia yet I still have a hard time believing it.

My parents were worried sick when I got home at eleven o’clock that night shivering in my soaked clothes. I made up a lie that I had failed to catch the last bus and that my phone’s battery had suddenly died; leaving me with no choice but to walk all the way home. Surprisingly, they believed me and didn’t push me too much about where I had been. Of course they wouldn’t, I’m Jin-Ah their perfect daughter who never lies. I’m so sorry but forgive me this one time? This time I can’t tell you what the truth is…because it’ll hurt you so much more than any of my lies ever could.

For the last week I have been getting steadily worse. I can feel my health and life starting to slip away. My head hurts, I bruise at the faintest touch, I wake up at night with terrible fevers, I don’t eat; I try to but the food clogs my throat until I’m left with no other choice but to spit it out. I’m afraid my parents will get suspicious so I distance myself from them. Saying that I have a school project, I stay in my room most of the time. I wear baggy clothes to hide my fragile frame and black and blue skin. I always wear make-up in the house now; in hopes that the concealer will hide the black bags under my tired eyes.

I keep telling myself that it is just for a month. One month and everything will be finished. I can lie for that long if it means I’m protecting my loved ones…but am I protecting them? How will they feel when I’m gone? Happy, relieved and grateful that I didn’t bother them in this last month; or sad, grieved and angry that I robbed them of their right to know the truth?

I hear footsteps on the stairs, and immediately close my eyes as my room’s door is creaked open.

“Jinny, darling it’s time to wake up.” My mother whispers as she moves to pull my curtains open.

I slowly open my eyes pretending that I have just gotten up and that I haven’t really been awake since 3 am.

“Good morning.” I mumble as I slowly stretch my hand. I wince as my hand comes in to contact with the bed’s headboard…ouch, well that’s another bruise added to my already impressive collection.

My mother tells me that breakfast is on the table and that I should hurry up and get ready for school. I nod my head as my mother leaves my room. School…yet another thing that is still normal in my abnormal life. I’ve never really been one to like school and studying but right now I’m thankful for it, because it’s a bridge to my old life…a rope I can grab onto in hopes that I will not go crazy.

I put on my school uniform, which like all of my other clothes is now far too big for me, and try to lift my bag pack; but it’s too heavy for my weak body. I sigh as I take two books out of my bag and place them on the floor…oh well, it’s not as if my grades matter anymore.

Going to school always seemed like a chore, but it is now exactly that; a big, impossible chore. I drag my feet as I board the bus and instantly fall down into the first empty seat I find. 15 minutes later I’m standing in front of the school gate feeling exhausted and sick, but I try to not show it. I just take a deep breath and shrug my bag closer to my body as I make my way into the school grounds.

Mornings are hectic in every school. Students are walking beside me; talking about the latest gossip, laughing at each other’s jokes, finishing up homework they should have done last night…but me? I feel like I’m a lifeless corpse just gliding by in a sea full of young energy. Not that anyone notices, no one ever noticed me my whole life…except for one person; and now even he doesn’t care what happens to me anymore.

“Sehunnie…Sehun Oppa,” I turn around as I hear a shrill girly voice call his name. And there he is. Standing beside the girl of his dreams with his arms wrapped around her. Oh Sehun…my former best friend.

We were friends since we were babies. Our parents were neighbors and thought it was so cute and funny that Sehun was born just a few days before me. Growing up, everyone in the neighborhood called us twins. “There go Sehun and Jinny.” The old ahjummas would say. “Those kids are attached at the hip; mark my words, they’ll end up married one day.”

Sehun would make a face whenever someone made a comment like that. “She’s like my sister!” He would whine. I would of course agree with him, but little did he know that my heart fluttered whenever someone mentioned that we were like soul mates.

At first I put my feelings for him as a crush. I thought they would die down eventually. But years passed and we graduated from primary school into high school but yet my feelings for him were getting stronger by the day. I knew he was considered handsome; but honestly it wasn’t his face that I loved…it was him, everything about him. How we both loved the same things, how we could finish each other’s sentences, how I could only lift my eyebrows and he’d immediately know what I wanted. But I never confessed my feelings for him. His friendship meant too much to me to simply through it away for a one sided love. Years passed and we stayed like that. Two inseparable friends; but friends just the same. It was us against the world, and I was happy with just that, but I should’ve known that it was too good to last.

Things started to change when he turned sixteen. Up to then he had been considered a thin awkward boy; but after his birthday he suddenly transformed into a cold and cool man with a perfect body and an angel like face to match. Girls started going crazy over him and many admiring notes were thrown into his locker. Initially Sehun didn’t give the throng of girls a second glance. Their love notes where nothing more than our lunchtime jokes. He was still my Sehun; even if he had somehow turned into a male god that every girl wanted.

I wanted to tell him about my true feelings too, but I was afraid that he would see me like the other girls. Like I only wanted him for his new found looks when in reality my feelings were so much deeper than that. Once again fear of losing his friendship kept me from saying anything and I quietly bade for a better time.

But that time would never come. The year after a new girl was transferred to our school. Her name? Krystal Jung. An American-Korean who had lived most of her life in America and had just moved back to Korea because of her father’s business. One look and it was obvious that Krystal took a liking to Sehun, and it was to my complete horror that I found out he liked her back.

I had to stand by and watch as the boy whom I had been in love with for my whole life fell in love with another girl. But things didn’t stop there. Not only did he have a new girlfriend but he also, apparently, had new friends.

In every school there is the IT group. A group of popular kids that rule over everybody else. And in our school the IT group=EXO, an elite group of 11 boys all incredibly handsome, rich and arrogant. Sehun and I always used to make fun of them and everyone else who followed them like lost puppies…but what do you think happened when EXO asked Sehun to become their twelfth member? He accepted…he actually accepted; and that was the day I finally saw the truth…the Sehun I knew and loved was long gone and there was nothing I could do about it.

For a few weeks after Sehun’s transformation he still hung out with me, but I guess his new friends told him that I wasn’t cool enough. He started to back away from me. And that was when we had the biggest fight in our whole friendship, where I told him things that would have been better left unsaid. Ever since then the boy who had been my best friend became a complete stranger to me. We don’t even greet each other anymore when we accidently meet in class or in the corridors. We still live in the same neighborhood but we no longer go to school together; he catches rides with his hyungs and I take the bus alone. It’s like we were transported into two different worlds, and our friendship stayed in the old world; a child’s world, a world were beauty, money and popularity meant nothing.

I’m transported back to the current time. I see Sehun in front of me. He has dyed his hair; it’s now blond, a color that I think doesn’t suite him at all, but who am I to say my opinion? We’re not even friends anymore. His arm is wrapped tightly around Krystal, his girlfriend of a year, and he is busy talking to one of his group members, the Chinese transfer student, his name’s Lay I think.

Sehun is so absorbed in his conversation that he doesn’t even notice the silent looks that are going on between his girlfriend and another boy who’s also one of EXO, Kai. Kai raises one eyebrow and signals to the right, Krystal nods her head a little before reaching up to Sehun’s ear. She whispers something to him and then giggles as she walks away from her boyfriend towards the right corridor. Five minutes later, unnoticed by Sehun and Lay, Kai follows in the same direction Krystal went. I freeze dumbfounded. Could it be? No I must be wrong, as usual I’m reading into the situation more than it’s called for…right? And even if something is going on, what’s it to me? It’s not like I owe Sehun anything.

 I notice that I have been standing in the same spot for fifteen minutes, staring at the back of Sehun’s head like an obsessed stalker. I’ll be late for class if I don’t hurry up. I walk towards the stairs and with difficulty, climb them up to the second floor where my first period will be held.

“Have you heard?” A girl whispers to her friend as I walk into the school cafeteria for lunch.

“Of course! How could she?” Her friends answers.

“She? How could he?!” A third party joins their conversation.

What’s going on exactly? The school hasn’t had this much buzz since last fall, when we got second place in the between schools football cup. Suddenly I stop in my tracks, what if news has got out that I have cancer? They can’t possibly know, right?! I start to panic. But pretty soon I come to realize that everyone in the cafeteria is not staring at me, but at an empty table. A table where Sehun and his buddies usually sit around. What on earth is going on?

I don’t bother to stand in line to get lunch, I won’t be able to eat it anyway. Instead I buy a bottle of water and sit at a table. Some of my classmates are seated at the table, but they ignore me just like everyone else and instead continue their talking. Now, I’m not one to usually listen to other people’s private conversations; I respect their boundaries and all. But today I can’t help it, my ears uncontrollably prick up at the sound of his name.

“Have you heard what happened to Sehun?” One girl asks as she sits down at the table with us.

“Who hasn’t?” A girl, who I recognize from my history class, snorts. “It’s all over the school.”

“Poor boy,” Another girl says. “and with his best friend too.”

Now I’m really confused and curious. What are they talking about? Is Sehun hurt? Just when I think I can’t take it anymore a girl walks up to our table and sits down beside me. She turns to one of her friends and says: “Uh, my alarm clock went off late this morning and I missed the first and second period. What’s going on? What is everybody talking about?”

I could have honestly kissed her for asking the very question that is practically killing me from the inside.

“Oh my god!” her friend squeals, clearly delighted that someone has not heard about the juicy gossip yet and that she can be the first one to tell. “You will never guess what happened! You know Oh Sehun right?”

The other girl nodes her head. Well of course she knows him, who doesn’t?! Just get on with it, I’m dying of curiosity here!

“Well you know how he’s dating Krystal?” Thankfully this time she doesn’t wait for an answer to her obvious question. “Well this morning Krystal skipped first period and was hanging around in an empty class when the school secretary found her.”

“That’s it?” The girl beside me asks, once again stating the question that I am also thinking. “That’s what all this commotion is about? She skipped class and will probably end up in detention for it…what’s the big deal?”

“The big deal,” Her friend answers, rounding her eyes in mock astonishment. “Is what she was doing in that empty classroom when she should have been in biology. The big deal is that she was meeting up secretly with someone there. A boy. The secretary caught them kissing, and the biggest deal of all is that the boy wasn’t her boyfriend; but her boyfriend’s best friend, Kim Kai. When news got around to Sehun, he dumped Krystal then and there in front of everybody. That was two hours ago. He skipped his next class and no one knows where he’s gone.”

I try to process what I’ve been just heard. So those looks between Kai and Krystal did mean something. I knew it. I knew from the start that this Krystal girl would be no good for him. I knew that those EXO boys would never be his true friend. I just knew it, damn you Oh Sehun. Why didn’t you listen to me?! And now what? You’ve run away? How very mature and manly of you. Of course, I know where he is. There’s only one place he could possibly be, the place he used to go to whenever he was sad…actually a place we used to go to together.

Before I can even process what I’m doing, I have already walked out of the cafeteria and am on my way to a place I haven’t visited for over a year now. A place I stopped going to ever since our friendship ended. A place that simply holds too many memories of him…of us.

On the school’s rooftop, in a spare corner, the biology teacher has grown a miniature garden. A place where she grows the plants and specimens that we study about in her class. Sehun and I stumbled across this garden when we were walking around the school in our first year. Technically students are not allowed on the rooftop; but the moment we set eyes on this place, we just knew that it would become our haven. It’s a secluded area and no one ever comes up here except the bio teacher, and she either didn’t notice or was kind enough to ignore our presence. Whenever things got tough in school or at home, Sehun and I would come to our secret hide out; we would sit on the ground surrounded by different plants and flowers and just talk until we felt better.

So I’m not surprised when I see him now. Sitting down beside the rose bush with his face buried in his hands. Even with this much space between us I can practically feel the hurt radiating from his body. I want to run towards him, to hug him, to comfort him, to tell him that I will never betray him like his so-called friends have, to make him see that I’m still here. But honestly I can’t do any of those things. Because this boy isn’t the Sehun I used to know…he’s not my Sehun. I don’t even know why I came up to this place? Maybe because I thought he needed a shoulder to cry on at a time like this?

Just then he slowly lifts his head and looks straight into my eyes. His eyes are blank of all emotion until he recognizes my face; that’s when he shows one emotion: anger. He gets up from his crouch and walks swiftly towards me, stopping just a few feet from where I’m standing. He bends a little so we are at eye level.

“What are you doing here?” He softly growls. I swallow a little, so much for him needing a shoulder to cry on, a punching bag would have been a better guess “Come to gloat on how you were right all along? How you told me that Krystal didn’t really love me? How you told me that my EXO hyungs never really cared about me? How could they? I’m not rich and special like them am I?”

I wince as he says the same words I shouted at him a year ago in that fight. The last words I said to him. Does he think that I’m happy that my predictions came true? Can’t he see that it’s killing me that he’s so hurt? “Sehun-ah, I…”

“Don’t bother Jin-Ah ssi. I don’t care about what you think. I haven’t for a long time.” With that he walks past me. Gently shoving me as he goes. The touch might be slight, but it’s still enough to make my weak and exhausted body fall to the ground. I sit on the cold concrete as tears start to form in my eyes.

I’m sorry Sehun-ah. I’m sorry for everything that I said. I’m sorry for stepping out of my line. I’m sorry these people have hurt you. But most of all I’m sorry I came running after you…I’m sorry that I forgot…I forgot that you don’t need me anymore.