Jinae hears the door open up with a soft creak at around six in the morning. She is ready, the file on the bed while she sits with her legs crossed and her hands folded in her lap as if having them in a conservative position will enable her to keep her sanity. Her world has stopped on its axis the moment her shaky fingers had delved through the file, eyes scanning the documents as understanding suddenly blossoms through her mind as she reads every single line twice to make sure she isn’t dreaming. 

Taehyung is receiving a kidney transplant and from what she can see of his medical history, it isn’t the first one that he’s having. He had a surgery before that to remove one bad kidney and had been surviving on one sole kidney for the past five years. It is only until recently that he’s been having trouble with the said organ, as per what the medical transcripts are saying. 

Throughout all this, the one main question that keeps running through her mind is: why the hell had he not told her anything? Why keep this all a secret? 

If only she’d known how much trouble he has been going through. The thought of it now drowns her with guilt. All this time she has been angry with him for not being able to spend time with her, dismayed that he seems to prioritize his professional life more than his personal ties with other people, and yet the young man has been suffering alone for a long time now. 

The guilt is present in her chest, tightening her heartstrings into a knot until it gets harder and harder to breathe. She feels like someone is choking her at the back of , and she coughs it out as tears are prickling to fall from her eyes. 

‘Jinae?’ Taehyung’s soft alto brings her back to reality and she realizes that he has pried open the door, looking in only to be surprised at her still awakened state. A worried expression forms on his face, ‘Are you okay? Why are you still up?’ 

He crosses over his room with his arms already ready to bring her into the comfort of his arms, but halts suddenly when Jinae grabs onto the file and gives it out to him instead. His eyes flicker with uncertainty. 

‘What’s this?’ she asks in a low murmur. She doesn’t have to say it so loud, the words do the job for her. They pin Taehyung down like metal chains so that he feels as though the weight of the world has suddenly dropped onto his shoulders. 

He gulps, ‘Where did you find this?’ 

‘They were on your desk.’ 

He advances forward, biting the inside of his cheek when he feels the nervousness crawling through his body, ‘I can explain.’ 

Jinae turns her palms upwards in a gesture of giving up. Her face tells him that she’s had enough of his lies already, that she’s worn out from having to chase him down for explanations, and Taehyung knows that it hadn’t been the best way to deal with the situation at hand. 

‘Long story short, I--’ he takes a deep breath, exhales shakily before continuing, ‘One of my kidneys weren’t working and the doctor had it surgically removed a few years ago. I didn’t know that this one was going to fail too, but it’s apparently some kind of genetic deficiency I caught from my dad’s side.’ His head lowers to the ground and his voice drops to a strained whisper, ‘I wasn’t feel too well recently so I went to do a medical check-up. That’s when I found out about my other kidney failing. They put me on the waiting list for a kidney transplant donor.’ 

The silence that follows is so loud that Jinae can hear the numbing hum of the four walls surrounding them. They echo loudly through her ears and suddenly she feels lightheaded. Grabbing a hold of her head, she tries to regulate her breathing as the panic turns into the shocking realization that there’s a possibility of death in this situation. She can’t think of this, she can’t deal with this. Jinae shakes her head as she whispers a string of profanities under her breath, but when her boyfriend moves forward to hold her, she lifts a palm up to him, rejecting his offer as she staggers out of the room. 

Her thoughts are whizzing through her brain as they try to find a solution, any kind of possibility of action that could help Taehyung out of this situation. But all too soon she feels her head pound with the early signs of a headache. She doesn’t make it to the door before she feels herself collapsing to her knees. Her hands try to find purchase against the wall, but they hit the edge of a lamp and it comes crashing down with her, a tangle of wires and wood and skin scattered on the floor. 

Maybe it isn’t too late, she thinks to herself with a growing numbness towards the situation. It’s almost like she is disconnected from her body, floating upwards to the sky and not really present, not really conscious of the situation. Maybe she can provide to be a donor, maybe she can help save Taehyung. 

A pair of arms slip through her back and cradle her elbows, pulling her up into a standing position. She is settled onto the couch nearby and doesn’t come to her senses until she feels someone crouch before her, a voice asking her a blur of words that don’t make much sense. 

She blinks only to realize that Baekhyun’s face is the one staring back at her. He has a fixed frown of concern on his face, hands holding her shoulders in a firm, comforting grip. 

‘Jinae,’ his voice becomes clearer when she blinks away the disorienting sensation, the ringing in her ears fading as his face comes into focus instead, ‘Jinae, are you alright?’ 

She stares at him. What is he doing here? 

‘Jinae.’ Baekhyun’s eyes are dark maroon, swirling with concern, ‘Can you hear me? Talk to me.’ 

She blinks slowly. Once. Twice. 

Opening before closing it again. She tries again, the words sounding pasty on the edge of her lips, ‘I’m okay.’ 

A second later she feels the trickle of a tear rolling down her face. Her face crumples up, tight with restrained pain. 

She bows her head. No words are necessary. She knows that he knows the situation is far from being okay. 

‘Why didn’t you tell me sooner?’ 

Taehyung’s gaze is concentrated on one of the smallest cracks in the floor tiles. It’s almost as if he is examining the fissure for future reference when he doesn’t even know anything about interior design, but Jinae knows that he is doing his best to avoid her gaze, too ashamed and filled with guilt of having kept such a big secret from her. 

‘Taehyung,’ Jinae calls for his name. Impatience is burning through her, but she’d rather not pressure the individual. She is torn between the feeling of sympathy for her boyfriend and the feeling of pressuring him to give her the answers she wants. 

Taehyung’s jaw clenches. He opens his mouth before closing it again, a guarded look on his face. 

Jinae lets out a sigh of frustration, ‘Are you going to tell me or not?’ 

‘How do you tell someone that you’re dying?’ 

His words puncture a hole right in the middle of her chest so that it leaves her gobsmacked. Swallowing the lump of emotion that has formed at the back of , she realizes that it still does not explain his negligence of priorities, for he has still ditched her to go work on his science lab report, for all she knows. 

Unless he hasn’t been going to the laboratory in the first place. 

‘When you said you were on a field trip for your science experiment,’ She tries to stop her voice from shaking, though it’s useless as he can see right through her facade, ‘it wasn’t really a field trip, was it?’ 

Taehyung gazes at her for a moment. He shakes his head. 

Her hea