Luhan, was what you would call a present kind of person.

Oh, not that he was a joy to be around. He'd talk until I learnt to tune him out. And this was especially useful because remember the one and only seminar I had? Guess what, he was in it too and he wasn't interested in listening to the 'old y man' at all. If I wasn't going to finish college, I felt that I had the responsibility to at least let my parents collect good exam results. 

Luhan, unlike you and I, don't replay past events finding a spot where it all went wrong, where it would be good to start over from again, just so we could get an explanation on this ty reality we're living in. And neither does he, like you and I again, think and plan carefully about our each step to the future, as if we could follow all those steps we created anyway - but it felt to have a stable kind of future to work towards, like at least in the future, your life was going to go the right way.

He doesn't think of more than second to the future - maybe an hour, if it was lunch - nor more than a day to his past when he would complain about his last night's sleep and that horrible bed his sister made him trade. 

It felt good to have him around. It makes me think that I have this horrible disease inside me just for a second. But that second will pass and the next second will come. And that second, too, will pass. And if these seconds were fast enough - this disease doesn't feel like it existed at all.

"So where will our next date be?" Luhan opted for hamburger this time round, after I complained that eggs sticking to his face will result in many pimples.

"We barely survived the rollercoasters, Luhan. I think I'd die of a heart attack before my blood cells attack me." Luhan was picking at his tomatoes with a cheesy grin on his face. 

I've been thinking that such a handsome face shouldn't be restricted of facing a dying man ever single day in the cafeteria. I felt a little pleased at the fact that Luhan sticks to me for all my lunch periods and my seminars because if not for him, I would be lost every single day and I won't have a handsome guy to stare at. I felt guilty at my own little confession. I was being selfish.

"Don't you have friends, Luhan?" Luhan's poking at my salad that my dad packed this time.

"I have you." I rolled my eyes.

"Friends who aren't dying." Luhan just smirked. 

"I don't know why you tell me everyday that you're dying. I have a good memory you know." Luhan decided that salads weren't his thing and picked up his half-eaten hamburger again, this time without the tomatoes.

"It just seems like you're just reminding yourself."

I don't really need a daily reminder that I'm dying. 

But it's not like just because I don't need them, they cease to exist anymore. 

Everyday I wake up, see more than a few strands of hair stuck to my bed - even though my hair was cut as short as I possibly can without opting for the bald cut. I walk to the bathroom and see my pale cheeks with sunken yellow eyes before I wash my face and scrub them as hard as I can so that a few red blood cells would come crawling out from wherever they seem to be in my body. Then I take the 7 pills as prescribed by my doctor - some were pink, some blue. I used to have this game when I would play Starcraft and if I won that game, I'd take the blue pill, if I lost, the pink one. 

Such were the games you'd think of yourself if you spend the all of your teenage years alone, battling a disease whose name you could hardly spell.

I got tired of that game though. I have to take those 7 pills 3 times a day. Sometimes, 2 or 3 white pills to keep me 'emotionally stable' in between lunch and dinner.  I just swallow them like candy now. 

"I don't need to remind myself that I'm dying." I suddenly spoke out loud from where I was sketching the Seoul's skyline. Luhan removed his headphones and cocked his head.

"I said, I don't need to tell myself everyday that I'm dying. I know. Everyday I wake up, and I know." I repeated, stretching my arms and putting my sketchbook down. 

Luhan just smiled that small smile of his before going back to colouring on his big board. But he kept his headphones hanging on his neck, showing that he was still listening.

"You said I tell you I'm dying everyday just to remind myself." I explained myself, a little more confident this time. "Well, that's not true at all."

Luhan dipped his brush in the water before picking up blue again. "I don't think you need a reminder that you have leukaemia at all, Minseok." 

I walked behind Luhan just to have a glimpse of what he has been painting for the last 4 hours. "Then what do I need a reminder of?"

"That you're not allowed to hope for more life, more life that you're going to get anyway."

It was a painting of me looking up at the rain on my first day at college.

Luhan and I were not dating. I wouldn't allow that proposterous idea to fester anyway. A perfectly nice and handsome guy like Luhan could not be dating a dying man like me. He would become a famous artist, beautiful artwork being painted by beautiful hands - and he doesn't need someone like me to be the marring his life with dark colours.

"Is he your boyfriend, Minseok?"

"He's not,