Chapter Three

When I think about it now, I realized I’ve had feelings for Luhan from the moment I first laid my eyes upon him. Back then, I didn’t know what those feelings were, exactly; all I knew was that I was attracted to him.

After we had more chances to talk to each other, I started to see the reason for that – he was mature and forever talking about the future, which was something I never do because as I was dying, I didn’t believe in having a future. I didn’t see a point in pushing forward for something that might not even exist, but Luhan was different.

He was optimistic, and being around him cheered me up a lot. Granted, my parents and Kai weren’t exactly bad companions, but they still couldn’t look past the fact that I was a dying person. I could tell they tried their best to encourage me to fight this battle and not give up, but instead of feeling motivated like I should, I only felt worse. They tried too hard to the point where being around them sometimes made me feel suffocated and sorry for myself because I was a cancer kid.

Like I wasn’t normal anymore.

But because he went through a similar situation before, Luhan understood me. I was happy with him,

The fact that I was no longer just thinking of him as a friend was sticking out to me like a sore thumb, but I still refused to acknowledge it. It wasn’t right for two men to fall in love. I was already deemed abnormal due to my illness, and I sure didn’t need my uality to further prove that point. What would people say? What would my parents think? Would they disown me?

Despite everything, I still went to bed every night putting the blame on God. It was like He teasingly placed a giant chocolate chip cookie right in front of me, made sure that I noticed it, then told me it was poisoned, so however reachable it may be I would never truly be able to enjoy it without suffering some dire consequences (such as being disowned).

If only Luhan were a girl, I often thought as I drifted to sleep, he wouldn’t look too bad in a dress.

We first held hands after about a month of casually going out as friends. It didn’t happen in the most romantic way like how I imagined holding hands with someone else other than my parents for the first time would be like. It came out of nowhere, and I was sure Luhan was as shocked as I was when it happened.

It was a Tuesday, and just like any other Tuesdays, I spent almost half of my day having cancer and slouching lazily on the couch in front of the television watching reruns of Running Man before my mum called me to lunch. I was trying to force as much of the sticky rice cakes down my throat as I could possibly manage (it was actually one of my mum’s best dishes, but I just didn’t have the appetite that day) when Luhan called.

“Do you wanna go out today?” he asked chirpily. The thing with Luhan was he always sounded like he just won the lottery or something. I didn’t even have to think it through before saying yes. “Great! See you at the river.”

“Who’s that?” My mum joined me at the dining table, and I actually jumped a little.

“Oh… Uh, it’s my friend,” I said.

“Your friend from the hospital? What’s his name again – Luhan?” She cocked an eyebrow. “You’ve been hanging out with him a whole lot these days.”

I tried to draft an excuse, but I couldn’t think of any that wouldn’t make me sound even more suspicious. “Mmm,” I just said, pretending like I was enjoying the tteobeokki very much, which I wasn’t really. Even chewing stuff exhausted me these days.

She looked at me, her expression laced with concern, as she spooned some rice cakes into . She took a few seconds to chew and swallow before speaking, “What happened to Kai? How come he hasn’t visited you for a while?”

“He’s busy,” I muttered, which was mostly true. It was almost the season for university entrance examinations and Kai had been caught up in preparations for his. I was slightly taken aback when he announced to me very seriously that he was even going as far as to take a break from girls. In Kai’s case, whose only interests in life seemed to revolve around girls, if that wasn’t a clear sign or indication that the exams meant a lot to him, I didn’t know what was.

I would be equally – probably even more – concerned about my exams if only I was allowed to sit for them. Well, technically, no one was going to stop me from doing that, but what was the point when I wasn’t even deemed medically sound enough to pursue a degree?

“You haven’t fallen out, have you?” I heard my mum asking. She seemed afraid that I would lose my one and only true friend.

I took a deep breath through my mouth and shook my head. “No, mum.” Although I was ashamed to say that I actually did resent him for a day or two after learning that he was going to apply for the very same university that I wanted to. It was like I hated him because he was healthy and I wasn’t, and I became angry at him for he was lucky enough to escape the clutch of cancer but I wasn’t.

Of course I still wished him luck afterwards. It was silly to be mad at your best friend for something that was out of his control.

After I successfully gorged down my food, I asked to be excused and told my mum I was going out to meet gorgeous Luhan, again. She nodded but I could see from her eyes that she didn’t want me to go. Not that it was going to stop me if she said no anyway. Once my mind was set to something, I could be very stubborn.

“It looks like it’s going to rain,” Luhan commented, holding out his palm to catch any stray raindrops. We were sitting by the river, watching the leaves and petals swim by as the current carried them away. I might be weird but I found that strangely therapeutic.

The river wasn’t the kind you would see in fairytales, flowing among trees in a forest and splashing against the rocks embedded deep within the soil. It was located at the edge of the city, fanned by breath-taking cherry blossom trees that were planted strategically to hide the view of concrete buildings, and they looked so beautiful they almost appeared fake. The river beds were covered in magnificent flowers in full bloom it was a miracle my asthma didn’t strike from all the pollen flying around.

In Seoul, that was as close to nature as you could get.

I thought I saw a flamingo but upon closer inspection, realized that it was just an ornament. If we were just strolling along the designated path then we wouldn’t have noticed that it wasn’t alive, but we decided it wasn’t much fun admiring the view from afar, so Luhan came up with this very brave suggestion to sit literally next to the river where the flower beds were so that we could easily touch the water if we wanted to.

Of course that was against the park rules, so the whole time I was sitting on tenterhooks, glancing around like I committed crime of the year, while Luhan was just lying against the soft grass like he owned the place.

“Stop flapping,” he laughed. I looked around for any signs of birds that he was referring to, but apparently he was talking about me, and my momentary confusion only made him laughed louder.

“What?”

“Quit worrying and just enjoy the view, will you?”

“What if they tell us to leave?” ‘They’ meaning whoever that was on patrol and on the lookout for rebellious teenagers and their friends jumping next to the river and destroying the plants.

Luhan looked at me. “Look around, Sehun. There’s no one else except us here. It’s going to rain soon and everyone is too busy seeking shelter to notice us.”

He was right. The sky was turning darker with each second’s passing, and the distant roar of thunder warned us of the incoming storm. “Doesn’t that mean we should probably go too?” I asked.  

“No way!” he said. “Why try to deal with something that hasn’t happened yet, right?”

Normally I would argue that it was better to prepare an umbrella before the storm – although we didn’t have an umbrella – just so we wouldn’t be too shaken up by what comes afterwards. At least we knew it was going to happen and even if we couldn’t stop it from happening, we could avoid being affected as much as we would be if we had no idea what was in store.

I didn’t say anything because I knew Luhan