06: things fall apart

Lung cancer.

Mingyu says it to himself again. And again. What the hell is lung cancer even supposed to mean?

He looks up the dictionary definition of whatever “cancer” is. Apparently, it’s a disease of sorts, but Mingyu already knows that. Of course, he knows that. When he used to live in Korea, some elderly woman his mom was friends with died of it. Mingyu knows, however, that he’s just stalling. If he pretends that he doesn’t know what cancer is, maybe his friend won’t actually have it. Just maybe.

Maybe.

Dean doesn’t come home from the hospital. Jennie packs a bag of toiletries and takes a cab downtown. She doesn’t come back for days either, and when she does, her eyes are always red and watery. Her movements are sluggish, and at night, Mingyu can hear soft sobs coming from Dean’s fire escape.

There’s no use in pretending. There never was.

Lung cancer.

Mingyu imagines a sheet of black and gray in Dean’s lungs, slowly expanding and expanding—until Dean’s lungs are entirely ashen. Until Dean himself is no longer himself, but only a gray figure slowly blowing away in the wind.

He hates it so much that he slams the top of his laptop down.

There’s no use in pretending.

Lung cancer. Stage four. Metastasizing. No insurance.

- - - - -

“Take your pills,” Irene says as she hands Mingyu his daily dose. In her other hand is a glass of orange juice. “Do you want to see Dean after we go to the park today?”

“I don’t know if I can.” Mingyu winces. Jennie had been giving them updates on Dean’s conditions, and it’s safe to say that things haven’t been going well. Apparently, Dean couldn’t breathe on his own anymore, so the doctors had to attach him to a respirator, and apparently every breath he could take, hurt. Walking got him so winded that all he could do was stay in bed. “I don’t want to see him like that…” Mingyu shudders and shakes his head. “Why don’t you go on without me?”

“I have been.” Irene sets down the glass of orange juice after Mingyu has taken his pills. Her eyes look to someplace faraway. “I just thought you’d want to maybe talk to him. He misses talking to you on that fire escape.”

Mingyu somehow manages to crack a smile. Yes, that fire escape. How many memories has he had there? Especially with Dean? How could he forget all those conversations with his cynical neighbor who always smoked and talked of music?

“Maybe I’ll see him sometime later this week.” Mingyu looks to the ground, too afraid to mention the date. He then looks back up at Irene. “Can we just stay in today?”

Irene’s eyes are still faraway, but she nods, still listening. “Yeah. We can go to the park tomorrow.”

- - - - -

Dean still has a smart mouth. Even in the face of death, he has a—and this is quoted from Jennie—“a smart ing mouth that won’t shut up.” To Mingyu it’s clear that Jennie loves it, that so-called smart mouth; the tears in her eyes say everything her trembling mouth can’t. She loves his smart mouth, no doubt about that, and she wishes that it won’t shut up.

“I’m going to the bathroom,” Jennie announces to Dean and Mingyu when she gets up. Irene is busy doing errands, so it’s just Mingyu visiting. “I’ll see you guys in five.”

Dean raises a hand to wave and weakly sets it back down with a wince. Mingyu catches notice of this.

“Are you okay?”

“Did you just ask me if I was okay?” Dean glares at Mingyu. His glare quickly fades away, though. He sighs and shakes his head. “No, I’m not okay, Ming. I really feel like ,” he says through a groan. “Everyday. I can’t even move my neck without all these ing—” He messes around with the wires surrounding him by twisting a few. “—wires and machines.” He leans back in the bed. “It .”

“I bet.” Mingyu looks over the complicated machinery. He wants to ask about the bills because that’s the only thing he can think of but ultimately decides that would be…unsatisfactory. “So how are you feeling?”

Dean snorts. “It ing hurts in my chest, bro. Breathing.” He takes a deep breath and promptly coughs. “It . Ask me something else.”

“Okay, uh, what have you been doing to pass the time?”

“Besides annoying Jennie?” Dean grins. “Watching daytime television. Did you know that Kim Kardashian has three kids now? It’s crazy.”

“Yeah,” Mingyu says despite not knowing who that was. “That sounds cool. Have you been writing songs?”

“Oh, yeah I have.” Dean nudges his shoulder towards the table by his bed. There’s a notebook on it, a pen sandwiched between two pages. “Open it. I think it might be a hit.”

Mingyu takes the notebook and opens it to the page the pen was holding. Instagram, the page is titled.

“What is it?” Mingyu asks as his eyes gloss over the lyrics. It’s messy with a lot of words crossed out and sections switched with other sections. However, what’s worth noting is not the clear revision but the fact that the song is nearly entirely in Korean. “Why’d you write it in Korean?”

“I don’t know. I just wanted to see how’d it feel.”

“To write in Korean?”

“Yeah, I miss writing in hangul.”

Mingyu stares back at Dean. “Do you really feel this way? In the song, I mean. It’s…” He takes a sharp intake of breath. “It’s really sad.”

“Well, yeah, because I’m ing sad that I’m going to die,” Dean says this with a laugh, like a joke, but Mingyu feels no slight elation. “Kidding,” Dean adds. “I’m just trying to make a social commentary on the world. Instagram does that. Maybe I don’t feel like I’ve been consumed with social media, but I know a lot of other people do.”

“Are you sure?”

Dean rolls his eyes. “Just because I’m dying doesn’t mean I’m not sure. Hell yes, I’m sure.”

His small outburst causes Mingyu to go silent for a minute, but he realizes what Dean means. “Sorry,” Mingyu says. “I don’t really know how to deal with this kind of stuff.”

“What? Dying?”

“That and social commentary, I guess. Letting out feelings—the whole nine-yards thing.”

“You’re getting better at it, though,” Dean notes. He slumps farther into his bed. One more inch and he might just sink into it completely. “And if it really matters, do something more. Write a book maybe. Start a journal. Just run your mouth to Irene. It’d be really good.”

“You think?”

“I know.” Dean cracks a smile despite the subject of their conversation. Bottled up emotions are never a good thing. “That’s why I run my mouth around Jennie all the time. If I stop talking, the silence takes over, and it makes me wonder of what it’d be like when I flatline.”

Mingyu freezes. “Dean, shut up.”

“What?” Dean frowns. “It’s not like I’m not dying. You know it. I know it. Everyone knows it. I am dying, and guess what?” He shrugs. “I’m fine with it.”

“Dean—”

“Don’t Dean me.” Dean shakes his head and waves his hand. “ that. It’s taken me a long time to accept that I was dying. Granted, it’s been like a few weeks at most, but that’s a long time to me, okay?” He doesn’t complete his sigh because it turns into a cough. “I know I’m going to die soon, Mingyu. And it’s going to be okay. For you. For me. For ing everyone.”

Mingyu doesn’t know what to do with his hands. They sit in his lap, trembling. His lips tremble too, but he doesn’t know if he should cry. After all, he needs to be strong for his friend.

“God,” Dean breathes, “it’s going to be okay; I swear. It won’t be that bad. I promise. Jennie will be rich as hell one day. You’ll be doing what makes you happy. You’ll move out. You’ll have a balcony instead of a fire escape. It’ll be good.”

Jennie returns at this point, and Dean quiets himself. Mingyu, on the other hand, leaves the room under the guise he needs to go to the bathroom too, but in reality, he goes outside to cry. He doesn’t even know why he’s crying. Dean seems happy, so shouldn’t he be happy for him? Nevertheless, he goes outside and cries.

Just moments later, one of Dean’s machines go haywire, and Jennie screams for the doctors, who promptly go in and try to fix whatever the problem is. Jennie cries inside. Mingyu cries outside. And Dean is gasping—gasping “I don’t want to breathe anymore.”

- - - - -

“You know what?” Mingyu yells to Irene one day. The rooftop is bare, the sky is gray, and from a distance, they’d make a pretty good neutral palette. “I’m ing angry at everything. It’s not fair, and it never will be. I feel like , and everything has pretty much gone to . My friend is dying. Dying! He’s not even 30! What the hell? How is that fair?” Irene looks on, nodding along to his anger like music. “I hate this so much. I hate debt. I hate hospital wards. I hate death. I hate it! Sometimes I wish everything would stop, so I could take the moment and not feel anything.” Tears fall down his cheeks. “I just don’t want to feel like this. Don’t wanna feel like . And I-I-I-I—” Mingyu’s voice cracks, and he slumps back into the blankets they brought up there. “,” he curses in a whisper.

Ranting is supposed to be healthy, and it does feel better, but nothing has changed. Dean is still in the hospital. Life is still unfair. They are still on the rooftop. The sky still looks gray. If anything changed, it’s that Mingyu’s throat hurts from all the yelling.

Irene lays down beside him and places a hand on his pulsing heart. She doesn’t say anything because she knows better than to urge him to get riled up again.

- - - - -

“What do you think will happen?” Mingyu asks Irene when they’re back on the rooftop after a long day at the university. It’s very late now—1AM—but this is the only time today that they’ve gotten together. It’s still nice, though. At this hour, the harsh feeling of the city and all its people isn’t as bad. Mingyu feels a little important in contrast to all the worthlessness he feels during the day.

“In general?” Irene inquires, arched brow and all. “Or after a certain event?”

“In general.”

“Well,” Irene drags out the word, most likely to buy herself some time, “on a political scale, I think people will never be truly happy or truly agree upon one thing, so that leaves out the world being one big utopia in a few years.” Mingyu lays on his back to watch the sky. “On a local scale, I don’t think the landlord is going to give a crap about the living conditions here.”

Mingyu laughs; it has been true. Irene pauses to giggle about the matter herself. She, firsthand, knows just how little the landlord cares.

“And us?” Mingyu asks, lacing her fingers through hers. “What do you think will happen?”

Irene immediately stops with her giggling. “W-W-What?”

“What do you think will happen to us in the future?”

“I-I-I—I don’t know,” Irene stutters. This might be the first time that Mingyu has heard and seen her get so flustered. Being Irene, she’s never unsure of what she wants to say.

“You don’t know?” Mingyu presses. He had hoped that she would have said something beautiful quickly, but her unsurety worries him. “What do you mean you don’t know? You don’t see us together in the future?”

“W-Well, I-I-I—that’s thing,” Irene chuckles nervously, “I don’t know. I mean,” she quickly rushes in, “we’ll be together tomorrow, and that’s a fact, but five years from now? I-I have no idea.”

“You mean, you don’t see us together.”

“No, no, no, it’s not like that, Mingyu.”

“Then what?” His heart has fallen to his knees due to the fact that she can’t clearly answer him.

“We’re talking about the future.” Irene squeezes his hand to offer him comfort, and in a way, it does. But his heart is still so reckless. “The future will always be uncertain. I don’t want to make promises that I don’t know if I can keep.”

“But you’re not promising me anything,” Mingyu points out, “I just want to know if you see us together.”

They stare at each other for a few moments, neither one relenting to end the silence. Finally, Irene gathers the courage.

“I see us together,” she says quietly. There’s a small smile on her face, though, and it makes Mingyu feel instantly better. “Now come on.” She rises. “Let’s go to bed.”

Mingyu tilts his head. “It’s Friday, and we’re not doing anything tomorrow. What’s the rush?”

She shrugs. “There is no rush. I’m just tired.”

Being Irene, all she has to do is smile, and Mingyu wordlessly follows her back into her apartment. There, they snuggle under the covers and sleep in their shared warmth. Nothing feels as good as this, Mingyu thinks to himself in the moments he drifts to his dreamland.

- - - - -

It’s one of those gray days. So gray that Mingyu sits numbly—pretending that he really isn’t, of course, to hide suspicion—and clicks random buttons on his camera. Some of the footage is still there, so he watches those to get a feeling of something. Of anything.

There’s one video that catches his eye. Dean is the thumbnail. When Mingyu presses play, Dean comes to life by throwing a cigarette at the camera, a curse following shortly afterward. At that, Mingyu cracks a smile. Typical Dean. The video continues, Dean turns around, strums a few chords on his guitar, and the sound quality crackles. Then very softly, it’s Dean’s voice. Singing. Mingyu swears his heart has stopped. Soft and thorny and pained, Dean sings. Mingyu doesn’t know how he didn’t notice this before.

The video stops when the traffic outside of their complex gets too loud.

Mingyu moves forward to see the rest of the camera roll. He stops at one that is just a black thumbnail. 20 seconds.

The video is underexposed, but as the seconds pass, Mingyu realizes why he made that choice. The video shifts to a ray of light, the background and everything else is black, but the ray of light illuminates a pair of closed eyes. Irene’s. Judging by the whiteness of the light, it was very early morning when this video was taken. Abruptly, the video cuts.

And Mingyu goes onto the next one, only to be interrupted by a bouncy Irene.

“Mingyu,” she exclaims, “look!” She holds up a red flower—a blooming rose. “Someone was handing these out by the bodega.” She places the rose in her hair, behind her ear, giggles, and just like that—she’s so cinematic. “How do I look?”

“Like a movie.” Mingyu doesn’t feel that gray anymore. “Do you have a white dress?”

“A white dress?” Irene seems unsure about her laughter. “Uh, yeah, but—”

“Put it on.”

“What? Ming—”

“Can you please put it on?” Mingyu asks again, already starting a video on his camera. At that, Irene relents and goes to her room to put on a white dress.

She comes back two minutes later in a white dress that falls midthigh. It’s flowy, backless, and so gorgeous against Irene’s already near-white pale skin. Her raven-hued hair gives it such contrast, and the pop of red by her ear—oh god. Mingyu has to pause and take a breath because it is so stunning. That color combo, the way she looks like she stepped out of a silver screen and into his life. She’s so timelessly beautiful. Could his camera even capture that? He doesn’t know, but he can try.

“Why are you staring at me like that?” Irene giggles, suddenly shy, and Mingyu has to smile at his own reaction. “Are you going to take a picture already or what?”

“Yeah, yeah…” Mingyu trails off, still stupefied by the way she looks.

He wants to take his time staring at the way she’s looking just before he makes another move. Movies and photos are timeless and all, but there’s nothing better than the real thing—

“Well?” Irene giggles at Mingyu’s extra-long pause. “Are you…?”

—and nothing will ever be better than the real thing.

- - - - -

“I swear!” Irene exclaims with a sigh as they enter Mingyu’s apartment. There’s a tray of pot roast in her hands. “Jennie said she was going to come home for a night!”

“She’s probably at Dean’s.” Mingyu rubs the back of his neck, feeling all kinds of bad. Irene worked so hard to make a meal for Jennie, but he can see why Jennie wouldn’t be home. It’s Dean. Dean is literally in the ing hospital ing dying. He’d go too, if he could. “It’s okay, Rene. We can go over tomorrow again.”

“No,” Irene mumbles, shaking her head. “You know, I hate going to hospitals.”

“Really?” Mingyu arches a brow. “You’re usually the one telling me to go see him.”

“I do that to make myself seem stronger. Truth is, I hate hospitals. Too much…suffering.”

“You know, I feel the same way, but,” Mingyu takes a sharp intake of breath, “I feel bad if I don’t go. What kind of friend would I be to Dean if I didn’t visit him on the grounds that I didn’t want to see him suffering?”

“That’s true.” Irene sighs and sets down the tray of pot roast on the table. “But I feel bad seeing him, and I feel bad not seeing him.”

“There’s nothing we can do about it, though. And that’s the point. We have to be strong for him.” Mingyu shrugs. “Now, come on. This pot roast isn’t going to eat itself.”

“Go ahead.” Irene is already walking back to the door. “I’m not hungry.”

Mingyu tilts his head, unsure if she really means that. “Wait, are you—are you okay?”

“Yeah, I’m fine. Goodnight.” Irene closes the door with a smile, leading Mingyu to believe that maybe she’s just tired, but something doesn’t feel right. While all signs point to yes, it is alright, it doesn’t feel like it.

- - - - -

“How’s your friend Dean doing?” Vernon asks Mingyu as they’re waiting for Wonwoo and Seungcheol to arrive. It’s a warm day in Central Park, but neither of them feels as bright. There’s a gray undertone in how Vernon says it and a grayer one in how Mingyu answers it.

“Not good. It’s stage four. It’s in his lungs, diaphragm, ing bone.”

Vernon inhales sharply. “Yeah, I shouldn’t have asked.”

“No, no, I’m glad you did. It’s a good reminder that life is hella ed, and we’re just existing in it.”

“Tell me about it,” Vernon says, and he pauses under the shade of a willow tree. “I have a question for you.” Mingyu nods upward. “What would you do to save your life? Anything, right?”

“Yeah, anything.” Mingyu doesn’t think of the matter anymore since his mind is in a million places, but Vernon continues to press.

“Without a second thought, you’d do anything, right? Without shame and regret?”

“Maybe not without shame and regret, but if it’s my life,” Mingyu stares into Vernon’s wide eyes, “then anything goes. To hell if I feel ashamed and definitely to hell if I’m a little regretful, because it’s life. I’m depressed,” he cracks a grin that Vernon doesn’t reciprocate, “so I should know.”

“Okay,” Vernon says, finally beginning to smile. “I just wanted to know your thoughts. Thanks.”

“No problem.”

The two of them turn to look at the pond, but Mingyu’s eye is tripped up on something before it can catch sight of the flying birds. Vernon has another not-so subtle mark (an undeniable hickey) on his neck.

- - - - -

Mingyu is alone on his fire escape. It’s been a while since this last happened. In the past, Dean was always below him, blowing smoke halos. Or he was with his friends, Vernon, Seungcheol, and Wonwoo—or some combination of them. More recently, he has sat up here with Irene. But now, he’s alone, and he likes the solitude. It makes him feel smaller than usual, but that’s the beauty of that. It’s good to feel small. It’s good to feel humbled.

A sound causes him to whip around.

“Irene?” Mingyu immediately reaches out to her when he realizes that she’s in his apartment. “What’s wrong?” He takes note of how she looks…sad. “Are you okay?”

“I’m fine,” she murmurs. “No. Don’t. I want to sit outside with you.”

Mingyu relents despite it being hotter today. When it’s hot, the entire city seems to sink, everyone displeased with the humidity and the stress.

“I, uh,” Irene says when they’re both leaning against the railing, “just had a bad day.”

“Why? What happened?”

“I don’t really want to talk about it.” She gives him a small smile that doesn’t reach into her eyes. “Can we just hang out here?”

“Of course.” Mingyu pushes her hair back from her face. The unusual sadness in her eyes is so unmistakable that he doesn’t want to not talk about it, but it’s her. “I love you.”

She pauses and then kisses him on the cheek. “I love you too.”

- - - - -

“What are you doing?” Irene is doing much better than she was a few days ago. She has just spotted sight of Mingyu taking pictures of a bird—a bird that is eating the sandwich he made—and she’s smiling (almost laughing) at the ridiculousness of it. “You’re just going to let that guy take your food?”

“I don’t know.” Mingyu peers at the small bird and the way it’s so eagerly eating away at the bread. “Maybe he needs it more than I do.”

“Really? You were just complaining about how you didn’t get to eat breakfast.”

“Yeah, but maybe the little guy has gone days without even a little something to munch on.”

Irene gives him a weird, skeptical look. “You know what? I like that. But you should be a little selfish next time. I don’t buy bread for birds to eat.” She places her hands on her hips. “I buy them for you.”

In response, Mingyu laughs and grabs her by the waist and squeezes lightly. “You’re so adorable, Rene. You’re just jealous that I’m taking pictures of the bird and not you.”

She immediately moves away to slap him in the arm. “I am not! Just make another sandwich before you actually go and starve.”

“No,” Mingyu says with a laugh. He places his camera on the fortitude of blankets, pillows, and mats they have on the rooftop at the point. “Come here.” Irene hesitatingly, slowly makes her way to him, so he grabs her by the waist again, this time uncaring of the fact that he’s squeezing a little harder than last time. “You’re so cute.” His words bring her to frown, and he finds it endearing nonetheless. “I really love you, you know that?”

“So I’ve been told.”

“…and you just had to say that.”

The two of them laugh, and she sinks further into his arms. If it was possible, as she sunk into him, he sunk further in love. All of the stars (and for the sake of cinematic moments with cinematic people, the city lights are the stars) shine bright, and it’s cheesy and sappy all at once, but nothing could or would shine as bright as…them. With the most beautiful girl in the world wrapped in his arms, he too, feels like he shine, shine, shines.

Mingyu looks down at the perfect girl below him. Her eyes are closed, her dark lashes curling upward, begging to be kissed, but going unkissed. So he leans down and kisses her eyes until she opens them.

“You’re so beautiful,” he murmurs. He didn’t need to say it, but he had to. Needed to, actually. And she opens to say something, but he doesn’t let her out of the basis that he’s going to be a little selfish.

The next thing he knows, she’s sprawled across over their many blankets, his lips on her lips before they trail down to her neck and then the tops of her s. His thumbs graze over areas of her hips that leave her shivering, and his tongue begins to grow adventurous, slowly the sensitive flesh of her chest.

“M-M-Maybe,” Irene stutters, pushing his hands away for a second, “we should go back inside.”

“I don’t want too,” Mingyu mumbles back. He knows exactly what he wants, and what that is—is her. “Jennie and Dean are at the hospital, so no one else is coming up here.” He nudges a shoulder to all of their pillows and blankets. “And we’re comfortable enough.”

“We’re on a rooftop.” Irene stops trying to push Mingyu’s wandering hands away from touching her chest. “This is grounds for public indecency.”

“You don’t care.”

Her laugh is a star on its own, twinkling. “I don’t.” She sits up, however, and touches Mingyu’s face. “Are you sure? Here? Won’t it be your first time?”

“I can’t bring myself to care.” Mingyu wastes no time leaning forward to kiss her again.

In the next hour, they’re taking off each other’s clothes. Both of them laughing, Irene shuddering when a breeze goes past, Mingyu trying to stop the cold from reaching her. But in the end, none of it matters because they end up getting hot anyways. There’s a moment in the of this shared moment where Irene arches her back and goes slack in Mingyu’s arms where the setting sun makes love to her too. The red-orange hues skim over her skin delicately, fragilely, and when she opens her once tightly shut eyes, the brown of them is highlighted and exaggerated and reddened, like she holds a different type of sun within them.

They whisper sweet-some