It has been a month since Dahyun has been visiting  Mina, and while she was given a pretty generous schedule of times when her class would go visit their patients, Dahyun has become accustomed to visiting other days as well; weekends, the rare holiday, and she would even skip school sometimes to go visit the other girl. Somewhere in between the harsh scoldings that Mina would give her about proper education, Dahyun fell in love, and resigns herself to visit after school instead of skipping entirely.

On regular days, Mina tells Dahyun stories about how she used to play video games until ungodly hours of the morning, which resulted in Dahyun attempting to scold her about “proper education” to which Mina just laugh as weakly as ever to. Eventually, Mina opened up enough to talk about another one of her interests— dancing; and when it came to dancing, Dahyun could tell it was something Mina cared about. She couldn’t express herself with movement anymore, but her face was enough to tell Dahyun about the whole entire world. In the end, though, Mina would still never talk about family whenever it should have come up, and Dahyun would never ask, although the questions were at the tip of her tongue at all times.

Dahyun’s curiosity kept growing, though, feeling full of taboo words like ‘family’, ‘friends’, ‘home’ whenever she met with Mina. And Dahyun isn’t completely heartless, because she does genuinely feel ashamed that she’s so damn curious about the life that Mina is so obviously trying so hard to avoid and possibly forget , but she really can’t help it. She would like to say that she’s a caring girl, whenever someone she cares about (or, dare she say it, loves ) is feeling unsettled or hurt, she wanted nothing more than to help them through whatever demons they were fighting.

Ultimately, Dahyun did end up blurting out the question before she could stop herself. “What’s your family like?” She intended on keeping the curiosity hidden deep within herself, but Mina is telling another story and she’s skipping parts about her parents that Dahyun’s knows should be there somewhere—because Mina always fumbles whenever the words almost come out of , and as always, her face tells all—and Dahyun can’t take it anymore.

“They’re...well, there’s nothing too great to tell…” Mina chuckled, and it sounded so misplaced coming out of a mouth turned down. “I tried to believe in them, because you know how people say that family is always the most important, but...I couldn’t—no, I didn’t want to get hurt anymore.”

“Well, tell me. I want to hear about it all, every single thing. This world is a cruel place, but I don’t want it to get to you, because you’re beautiful—” Dahyun stopped herself, embarrassed. Her face warmed and Mina cocked an eyebrow despite a light flush blooming on her face as well. Mina’s smile is what encouraged Dahyun to continue on throughout the embarrassment. “yeah, you’re beautiful. On the outside, and the inside, so I don’t want you to live with this hurt in your heart.”

Mina chuckled again, face soft and eyes cast downward. She was staring at her hands, and Dahyun assumed that Mina would be playing with them now if she could. ‘If she could…’ Dahyun thought, her chest aching. It was easy to get used to the stillness and forget, but when Dahyun takes a mental step back and realizes that Mina is bound to facial expressions alone, the thought that there’s a lot of things she could do hits her like a ton of bricks. She could, she would, she wants nothing more to even twitch her fingers again at the very least, and Dahyun knows, and it hurts.

“It’s a long story...are you sure?” Dahyun smiled at Mina’s unsurety, sliding closer to Mina and making herself comfortable before signalling the girl to start. Mina tried opening and closing a few times, her eyes spanning the room this way and that, probably searching for a way to approach this.  “This is awkward, I don’t know how to start.”

Dahyun hummed. “What about your childhood dreams?” Dahyun offered while shifting positions. “One that you haven’t told me about.”

“Well, I had one dream. I wanted to be a dancer. I wanted to be on stage and I wanted to say everything I couldn’t say with my mouth, with my body instead. And I don’t know if you could tell, but I wasn’t exactly the most stand-out person growing up. Anyways, my parents allowed me to have ballet, at the very least, but they wanted me to continue with my father’s legacy and become a doctor like him.” Mina explained, eyes still studying the plain white sheets that cover her legs.

“How cliche,” Dahyun replied quietly, making Mina laugh.

“Yeah, very cliche,” Mina finally glanced up to Dahyun, the girl’s eyes trained on her. Mina glanced away and attempted to clear again.

“So, how did you come to want to be a dancer?” Dahyun continued with the questions, fairly certain Mina would still be unsure of how to proceed with talking about herself like this.

“Oh, well, I had this friend, Hirai Momo, we grew u