Chapter Two

I remembered that when I first saw Luhan, I was wondering “What the hell is wrong with this kid and why is he looking at me like that?”

We were sitting across each other in the waiting room. I had to see Doctor Kim for my weekly check up, and my mother dropped me off at the hospital early because she had an errand to run. I was less than happy about it because the waiting room outside Doctor Kim’s office wasn’t the best place to be – there were too many sick people around and I kept wondering, in spite of myself, if I was going to outlive any of them.

10 minutes passed before I noticed the skinny boy looking at me from the opposite side of the room. He didn’t even make any effort to hide the fact that he was staring at me. I felt strangely conscious of myself, all of a sudden. My hair was already growing back and I wasn’t really bald any more after they stopped the chemo and just put me on the miraculous medicine, which I had trouble pronouncing or spelling the name (which made me seem ungrateful), but I hadn’t bothered to style it up or anything because I wasn’t expecting for people to stare at me the way he was.

Then I immediately felt silly – why should I care if a good-looking guy was looking at me relentlessly? Shifting uncomfortably, I glared at him lazily until he smiled and looked away. His turn came before mine, and a moment later, the nurse called for me and I dragged my feet into Doctor Kim’s office.

I had to wait a little longer because he wasn’t quite done yet with the previous patient, i.e., the handsome guy with whom I had a staring competition with earlier. I could hear them talking in the other room and I found myself straining to listen in. I was, for some reasons, extremely curious about his illness. He didn’t really look sick to me, but I know he must have been, because Doctor Kim was a specialist in lung diseases, and you simply don’t visit him unless you are terribly sick because he wasn’t a cheap doctor to consult if you only have the cold.

He had the air-conditioning turned all the way to the maximum setting, it seemed, because it was so freaking cold I could barely feel my fingers. Or maybe I was just nervous.

After a few minutes – I lost track – he stepped into the office and greeted me. “Well, hello there, Sehun. Looking good.”

I just smiled. He had a very warped definition of “good”.

He flipped through my file and studied the report for the most recent test, muttering a few “mm”s and “ah”s. Then, he looked up with a grin. “It seems your condition is getting better now, Sehun. The treatment is working and your tumor stayed shrunk for the past week.”

I nodded, and he broke into a mad speech which included a lot of technical terms that I had become familiar with over the months. He didn’t say anything new apart from what he always said to me during every check-up. Things like, drink more water, stay away from this and that, and don’t expose myself to dust and germs. Like I could help it. We live in the city, after all.

At the end of the brief session, he handed me a copy of the report – which I would later toss somewhere among the pile of mess in my room – and shook my hand firmly. “Take care of yourself, Sehun. I hope for more good news the next time I see you.”

I thanked him nicely and walked out, wondering if my mum was already waiting for me outside. She wasn’t, but the boy was still there. And he beamed when he saw me coming out of the office.

Weird kid. I ignored him and went to an empty seat to wait for my mum. The boy stood up and plopped himself next to me.

“Hello!” he said, still wearing that sweet smile he had on his face since half an hour ago.

Technically, I had nothing against him. But I just couldn’t stand people who acted so nice to strangers they barely knew. It was so… fake. Like they were wearing a mask, and it reminded me of the time I had tried to put on a mask as well to hide my suffering from my parents.

I wanted to shoo him away, but there was something about him that made me want to talk to him. I couldn’t explain why. “Hey,” I said.

“I’m Luhan.” He held out his hand, inviting me to shake it. It would be rude not to, so I did. “What’s your name?”

“Sehun.” I checked my phone discreetly to see if my mum left me any messages to tell me she had arrived. She didn’t.

“Waiting for someone?”

“Yes, actually. I’m waiting for my mum to pick me up,” I said, at the same time my phone buzzed at the incoming text. Sorry, honey. I’ll be late. Something came up. I stifled a groan and sighed instead. “It looks like I’ll be waiting longer than I expected.”

Luhan smiled. I had no idea what he was so happy about. “Do you want to take a walk outside?” he asked softly, gesturing to the park visible through the window.

I pondered for a moment. I didn’t feel really comfortable that he was making such an effort to be nice to me. In a way, I supposed he felt sorry for me, like most other people would. But then again, he was sick too (although I still didn’t know what he was suffering from) so I didn’t see why he thought he had to show me any kind of sympathy.

Still, sitting in the waiting room was a worse option. It smelled like medicine and I had an irrational fear of tasting it if I breathe with my mouth open, which , because if I don’t breathe through my mouth I wouldn’t get enough air. And the park seemed to have plenty of that. Fresh too.

“Sure,” I finally said, much to Luhan’s delight. I found him rather silly, but when I look into those mesmerizing eyes, I couldn’t help smiling too.

No longer afraid I would taste medicine that wasn’t meant for me, I breathed a lot more easily in the park. Talking automatically became easier too, and I realized my social skills hadn’t really deteriorated much during my absence from the rest of the world. That, or Luhan noticed my awkwardness but chose to look past it.

I learnt a bit more about his condition. He was diagnosed with lung cancer two years back, but the chemotherapy worked extremely well on him and he went into remission in less than a year. So he was actually pretty healthy. No wonder he was smiling like that.

“Doctor Kim is a good doctor,” he said to me. “You’ll definitely get better soon enough under his care.”

I shrugged. I didn’t really believe in that any more. “It doesn’t really matter if I do. I don’t actually mind if I die.”

He stared at me, wide eyed. “Why not?”

My heart ached, but I dismissed it as another chest pain from my crappy lungs. “I don’t want to be a burden to my parents.” You have to stay in remission for five years before you are deemed to be ‘cured’ from cancer. Within those five years, you will be waking up each day praying to God that you don’t get a relapse. You will be restricting yourself from your usual daily activities because you’re afraid they will trigger your cancer cells. You will go to sleep every night thanking God that you lived another day, but worrying that it will be your last. It wasn’t the kind of life I wanted, or the one I wished for my parents to have. It was easier to just die. At least then they would be able to move on with their lives.

“Don’t you want to stay alive?”

“Not with my rotten lungs. What’s the point of going into remission if it’s not even a clear sign of recovery?” The moment I said that, I bit my tongue. Why did I have to mention that? “I’m so sorr