Aki inhaled the fresh air of autumn as she stepped outside the orphanage. Holding on to the straps of her bag, she walked the steps down to the street and proceeded her way to the graveyard.
It was still a few months before Christmas, but Aki had been excited for days already. Like every year, Christmas was going to be a time filled with love and friendship, despite the cold weather, it was one of the warmest moments in life. Even if she had no family to spend it with…

Aki became an orphan 11 years ago, at the age of 5, when her father didn’t survive an accident at work. Her mother had passed away after she gave birth to Aki. Aki was welcomed in Sakura Orphanage and lived there ever since her dad’s accident.
Because she was one of the oldest, Aki had a room for herself, which she was thankful for. So many of her dongsaengs shared rooms with more than 3 others, causing them to have little to no privacy. Aki embraced the privacy in her room as she loved to be on her own.
Instead of hanging in her room all day, Aki preferred going outside, because she loved the different colors, smells and feels that every season brought forth. Bringing her sketchbook along, she could spend hours outside, drawing what she saw or what she fantasized.

Today she was going to her parents’ grave. She didn’t visit them on a regular basis, but now she wanted to talk to them, she needed to tell them. Today marked a big day in her life.
“Appa, umma…” Aki said softly as she arrived at her parents’ shared grave. “it’s been a long time and I only have sad news to share…”
She squatted down on her knees and laid a gloved hand on the icy cold marble coping stone while the first tears started blurring her vision.
“I’m ill, appa, umma… The doctors said I have leukemia.” Aki said, barely audible.
Thinking about her illness, it made her silent. She wasn’t the type of person to talk about her problems with others. Telling her parents about her illness was awkward, moreover because there was only a marble stone with their names on it to remind her of them.
“I’m scared, but I’m getting chemotherapy. Today I’ll get the first session…” Aki whispered to the stone as little drops of water began pouring down out of the sky, bringing background music into the scene.

How long she had been kneeling beside her parents’ grave, Aki didn’t know, but when she heard the clocks of the nearby church, she knew she was running late for her appointment at the hospital.
Quickly she said her silent goodbyes to her parents and paid respect by bowing to their grave. Then she slung her bag over one shoulder and ran… She ran until her muscles ached, she became light-headed and panted for breath. If she ran on, her sense of balance would soon begin to fail. So she collapsed against a tree and sat down to regain her physical calm.

Only then did Aki realize how vicious the rainfall had become. She was practically drenched already. Raindrops fell down, splashing on the yellow and orange leaves of autumn, forming tiny pools of water everywhere around her. Aki didn’t want to think about the state her sketchbook would be in by now. Her bag was made of denim, which didn’t keep any water out. Fortunately Aki never kept her finished works in the sketchbook, they went safely into a box underneath her bed and a few of them had ended up on the walls of the orphanage, framed.

While she waited for her breathing to slow down and her dizziness to go away, Aki noticed a pair of shoes –male designer shoes– coming to a halt in front of her. Following up the shoes was a dark blue denim pair of jeans, without doubt designer as well, and if not, they still must have cost a fortune. On top of that the male being wore a slim black jacket of what seemed a firm polyamide and polyester mix, but was probably something more luxurious. In his right hand he held an umbrella, shielding him and a part of Aki’s stretched out legs from the rain. Slowly Aki looked up at the guy standing before her. A smile greeted her, but she could read concern in his eyes as well.
“Are you doing well? You look very pale and I noticed you don’t have an umbrella with you.” The guy said, with a voice that was remarkably warm and comforting.

However much Aki was taken off-guard by this guy’s appearance, she didn’t really open up to him. She never liked it when people pitied her. Prying eyes, story diggers, compassionate gossipers, curious watchers, Aki knew it was all about the people’s need to satisfy their longing for information, and juicy information was highly preferred.
“I’m… f-fine actually.” Aki managed to say, sounding as casual as possible, while avoiding the stranger’s glance.
“You’re shivering…” the guy pointed out, without a single trace of disapproval or sarcasm.
Aki pulled her legs a little closer to her chest as the guy squatted down in front of her to be able to look her in the eyes.
“Where were you heading to?” He asked softly, making Aki jolt and get up, as she remembered her hospital appointment.
“Hospital…” she breathed as she slung her bag over her shoulder again.
“Wait! Take this with you…” The guy said as he gently held Aki back by her right arm and handed her his umbrella.
Wide-eyed, but thankful, she accepted the umbrella while a slight smile broke through on her face.
Then she ran the last few meters, as fast as she could manage.

The stranger was still lingering in her thoughts as Aki walked into the waiting room and was immediately called in for further treatment.
“You’re a tad late…” the doctor said smiling. He was in a good mood today.
“I… I was needed to finish some chores.” Aki lied to spare herself from having to explain the entire situation, starting from her visit to the graveyard. The doctor couldn’t possibly know she had been drenched by the rain, since she had to change into hospital clothing already.
The doctor shook his head. “Unbelievable, they dared to let a Leukemia-patient take care of household chores?”
Aki raised her shoulders. “These things just need to be done.” she said, defending her alibi or rather, her lie.

A few hours later, Aki had gone through her first chemotherapy session. She was feeling horrible, as her body had to recover from the damage caused by the chemo radiation. For the time span of a week, Aki would stay at the hospital, monitored by doctors who checked whether the chemotherapy was effectively killing the cancer cells.

One of Aki’s few unnies at the orphanage had brought a bag with toiletries, some clothes and a few magazines to the hospital. Along with the bag, she also brought a new sketchbook and Aki’s familiar set of gray pencils. She even brought a newly bought set of colored pencils.

The days following the chemotherapy Aki had spend in bed, propped up against her pillows with her sketchbook on her lap, drawing. Because there was nothing that gave her inspiration for a sketch, she began fantasizing. Without much effort, her inspiration was driven by the one image of a young man handing her his umbrella. She began drawing what her memory could recall of him. When she was finished with the portrait, she placed it next to her bed. It was so much the stranger with the umbrella, that it even shocked her how well the image had stuck with her.

When after another 2 days Aki felt good enough to get out of bed, the doctors allowed her to get dressed and take up small activities within the walls of the hospital. Happy about the new opportunities, Aki took up her sketchbook and pencils and headed to the visitors room close to the main entrance. In her new surroundings there were lots of options to draw. Singling out a sleeping grandpa with a characteristic face, she began to draw.

A month had passed and Aki had now spend almost a full week of her second session of chemotherapy in the hospital. This time she had been more exhausted than after the previous session. Her hair had miraculously not yet fallen out, but it was remarkably thinner, as was the rest of her figure. Unexplainable bruises had appeared on her wrists and at the side of her face as well as on one of her upper legs. The chemotherapy didn’t seem to be very effective…

It was two days before Christmas when suddenly Aki saw the guy from her portrait walk to the exit doors of the hospital. Their eyes met each other for a brief second and the guy had decided to approach Aki with a smile. Aki noticed how his smile made him look much more little-boyish than his clothes suggested he was.
“Have you taken good care of my umbrella?” the guy asked cheerful as he went to sit next to Aki, a little hesitant, but not very nervous. “I’m Sanghyun by the way, but you can call me Chundoong… That’s how my friends call me."
“Aki.” Aki replied as she smiled at him and extended her hand.
“Japanese?” Chundoong asked, shaking her hand as Aki nodded once. “Does it mean…”
“Yes, it means autumn!” Aki laughed, amused how Chundoong as well as most others asked her about it. “Chundoong means thunder, doesn’t it?”
Chundoong nodded. “Better than ‘current phase’, right? Since Sang Hyun means ‘current phase’.”
Aki chuckled. It surprised her how easily she broke her habit to shy away from people, she WANTED him to talk to her, to keep her from doing something else, to OCCUPY her.
“What brings you to the hospital?” she asked.
“Oh, nothing big, just a regular check up on my vocal cords. I’m in a band and I was having a cold a few days back.” Thunder explained.
How Aki wanted him to continue talking. Then she could enjoy studying his face for a few seconds longer before having to speak herself.
“So you had the cold, while I was the person without the umbrella?” Aki joked.
Chundoong smiled the cutest grin Aki had ever seen. Even a giggling baby with mandu-cheeks and big sparkling eyes couldn’t tip this level of cuteness.
Then suddenly the expression on Chundoong’s face changed from happy, to surprised, to concerned and eventually to worried as Aki felt how warm liquid started to run from her nose. Touching her upper lip, she noticed it was red, she was having a nosebleed.
“Here, this will help stop the bleeding.” Aki heard Chundoong say as he handed her a paper tissue. However soon after she pressed the tissue under her nose, she felt herself dangling between consciousness and unconsciousness, until eventually everything turned black before her eyes.

Not knowing how to handle the situation properly, Chundoong’s natural reaction took over. He pressed the tissue under Aki’s nose, while screaming for a doctor.  A short period of time later, Aki was brought to the emergency room for treatment. All the while Chundoong waited for her at the door of the room, pacing the hallway.

Aki came around half an hour later and was brought back to her own room, but she was very weak and not able to hold any lengthy conversation. Three sentences was the most she could produce before sighing and closing her eyes for a brief moment. So instead of talking, Chundoong just sat alongside her bed. Somehow he felt he was needed at her side, even if that wasn’t true, he still wanted to be there.

Aki had closed her eyes, but Chundoong wasn’t sure whether she was sleeping or still awake. Gently he took her hand in his and he noticed to his relief that it was warm. His eyes wandered over her and Chundoong wondered why there weren’t any family members present. Then his eyes spotted a drawing on the bedside table. He looked at the figure and was shocked to recognize his own face. His mouth was a little different, but the rest of the drawing matched his features almost perfectly.
“Do you like it?” Aki’s voice asked softly, making Chundoong turn his head and nod.
Before he could answer her with words, the door opened and a doctor came in.
“I hope I don’t interrupt your conversation, but I’d like to have a word with the young man.” the doctor said and smiled politely.
Chundoong and Aki exchanged a look before Chundoong followed the doctor out of the room.

“You might have noticed Aki isn’t doing so well…” the doctor started and Chundoong nodded knowingly. Aki had told him about her illness, about the cancer that was eating away her energy.
“For the past months we have tried chemotherapy, but it doesn’t seem to be very effective, so we’ve started looking for donors for a BMT, a bone marrow transplantation.” Chundoong had heard about that before, he also heard it was a very painful operation.
“Are you willing to test your bone marrow tissue to see if it matches Aki’s? Normally a family member, preferably a sibling, provides bone marrow, but since Aki doesn’t have any family, we have to search for someone else.” the doctor explained.
Before Chundoong thought about Aki not having family, he nodded, agreeing to test his bone marrow tissue. A test wouldn’t hurt, besides how big could the chance of a match be? There really was only a tiny little chance of actually donating.

And that chance happened to be pretty big as Chundoong’s marrow was nearly identical with Aki’s. The day after the test results, the two of them were –dressed in hospital clothing, laid down on an operation table– ready for their operation. To make the operation a quick one, they were next to each other on one big table. Going through this together, they held each other’s hand as the anesthesia was settling in and they both closed their eyes to fall into an artificial sleep.

Chundoong was far from selfish, but he didn’t exactly run after the hungry and needy to support them. Somehow he did feel a strong urge to support Aki’s needs. The fact that she had lost both her parents and had no biological siblings made him want to take care of her even more. Although his friends had joked he was into charity, he didn’t see Aki as some sort of charity. Of course she needed a ‘donation’, but unlike with charities, he sincerely cared for her to survive, he needed her to survive. Up to a point that he wished he was the one with the illness, instead of her…

A week passed as the two were recovering together, their legs in casts. Aki had grown stronger and the liveliness had returned in her eyes. Her body had not rejected Chundoong’s marrow and that meant she was now in her process to recover from the leukemia.

“Where are we going?” Aki asked as Chundoong wheeled himself out of the hospital, followed by Aki, also in a wheelchair.
“You’ll see when we get there…” Chundoong grinned as he slowed down for Aki to catch up on him.
Today it was Christmas, the first day Aki was allowed to go outside. Chundoong had already been allowed to go out, since he wasn’t seriously ill.

They wheeled into the park until they reached a nice spot near the lake. Enjoying the view for a moment, Chundoong decided it was the right time.
“Aki…” he said as he gently took her hand, making her avert her eyes from the scenery around them to him.
“…do you want to be my girl?” Chundoong said, nervous, but sincere.

Goong… goong… goong… Aki’s heartbeat raced, her eyes filled up with tears of joy as she could only nod, not trusting her voice at that moment.
Chundoong’s cute grin appeared as he too started to become watery-eyed.
Instinctively Aki reached for her nose, but there was no liquid flowing, she was not going to black out, she was perfectly fine, although a little light-headed.
‘At the end of my season, there’s the prospect of another, even better one.’ Aki thought.
Chundoong chuckled as he moved forward and their lips became one in a dazzling kiss.