The spring calls and beckons when Soojung walks past the trees. It’s the perfect setting for a movie; the bird chirps, the glowing radiance of the sun and all the romance in the air is giving her a headache.

The weather doesn’t cooperate with her mood at all.

Other than coughing up blood on a daily basis and refusing to look Soojung in the eyes, Sehun is doing okay. But just not good enough.

He’s okay, but that doesn’t mean he’s better.

She feels guilty, or something along the lines of guilt, for suddenly taking off. She needed a break for just a few minutes.

Around 20 minutes earlier, Sehun was talking about the weather. The pungent metallic smell of blood fills the air in the room, but that’s nothing new. Sehun asks can you smell it, without referring directly to the blood.

Soojung just shakes her head with a smell what.

“The scent of life leaving me in bits and pieces.” Sehun replies. “One day, it’ll leave me completely, and I’ll just be this chunk of flesh and bones. Will you be able to handle that?”

She broke. Sehun, don’t speak like that.

She rang he caretaker up and left. She didn’t even pause to grab her purse, or stop to reply Sehun’s feeble calls of Soojung Soojung Soojung. Where are you going? Can I come?

It’s heartbreaking to hear the crack in Sehun’s voice. He’s so headstrong, independent and confident in his own skin that it feels like this side of him is just a hallucination.

I’m sorry. The spring breeze carries it from the tip of her tongue and flies it off until it becomes inaudible.
 

She approaches the same bridge. But the silence she had grown fond of is filled with distant laughter and chirps and rustles and child-like whines. Before it was too empty, now it’s too filled.

I’m so stupid. She thinks as she takes off one shoe after the other. The soft patches of grass feels foreign. I was too focused on regaining what I lost, that I couldn’t even acknowledge what I had.

Stupid.

She slumps on her spot.

“I was...I was lost.” She says to no one in particular. “I didn’t know who I was. I was drowning, and trying to breathe underwater is tough. It was hard trying to find something to belong to, when all I knew was all they told me. But then, there came this anchor.. in the form of ash white hair, long bony fingers that fit perfectly in between mine. I demanded to the universe for him to be the one who will let me belong again. But it didn’t work that way. It’s not supposed to work my way.”

“But Sehun.. he’s beautiful. God, he can’t die. Sehun is supposed to sit with me on a porch with real gray hair, wrinkles all over his face as he smiles at me with all the love in the world.”

“I’m scared. God, I’m so scared. The poor boy is fading from me everyday and I don’t know what to do. I’m scared that one day I’ll forget the way his hair smells like; the way he struggles to try to not grit his teeth when he speaks; the way he drags his feet when he walks; and God, his smile.” Soojung bites her lips. “I’m scared that if he goes, I might drown again.

“When they say things like I can’t imagine life without you, I thought it was amusing. Because I can imagine life without everyone I had known. But with Sehun.. I’ve tried it before, when I first heard that he might die. I tried and all I could picture was blankness. Nothing. On other times I see myself, alone. But when I turn my head I still see him, smiling next to me. It’s crazy. God, I still need him here.”

“It hurts.. never quite losing people because they’re not gone yet, but feeling them fading already.”

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