Chanyeol walks through Hangang Park after he separates with Baekhyun at the restaurant. The sun is setting, giving the city skyline an orange background, and young couples and families are emerging from their homes to enjoy a lovely evening stroll. A band is busking on the grass as he walks past, people sitting on blankets and listening. The bike lanes are full as usual, and an elderly woman is training with the park equipment underneath the bridge.

He continues walking, fighting away the tears, and as he settles down on a concrete staircase, he looks towards the river and remembers. Minseok loves the Han river. They were here often, as friends before they started dating and posing as friends afterwards. A hand secretly snuck into a pocket to intertwine fingers and carefully placed thighs, close enough to show a secret intimacy yet far away to not be interpreted as anything more than friends.

Chanyeol has always been the more talkative of the two, his words sometimes running rampant when love overwhelms him, but Minseok has always been able to translate exactly what he means. It’s memories of the nights spent watching the stars and the occasional airplane, sitting near the black water and wondering where they would be without each other.

The streetlights behind him turns on when the sun sets too low and the sky turns dark and he gets up. There are still a lot of people hanging out in Hangang Park, friends and families enjoying each other’s company. Chanyeol leaves the park when the longing becomes too much and the pain of losing Minseok becomes too real. He doesn’t get any sleep that night.

---

Sehee looks at him with pity. It’s becoming a little unsettling. She doesn’t say anything, though, because she knows Chanyeol doesn’t need a whole bunch of false hope. There is still no news from the CDC and his boyfriend’s condition hasn’t changed one bit, neither for better nor worse. She hands him a sandwich silently and pats his back softly before she goes back to the reception to fetch the file for the newly admitted patient.

Chanyeol sits outside the door to Minseok’s room and stares through the small glass window. Minseok is still isolated and Chanyeol isn’t really allowed to go inside. There is still no touching and he still has to wear the cover, the gloves and the mask, so it doesn’t feel right to go in. There’s no anger left in him, however. Just sadness.

Sometimes Minseok’s mother joins him in the chair next to his, watching her son-in-law with a sad smile and longing eyes. The hope that once burned in them has died only to be rekindled again. They don’t talk a lot. Chanyeol wants to say something but words of encouragement are only a façade by now. No one knows if Minseok is ever going to wake up and no one knows what he’ll be like if he does. The ECMO is doing its job and so is the ICU personnel but even then, there’re no guarantees. There never is with medicine.

“What now?” Chanyeol asks impatiently into his phone. An elderly man sitting in a wheelchair is staring at him, discreetly turning his chair a little so he can listen in on the conversation. Chanyeol eyes him and walks a few steps away, hoping to regain his privacy. “That’s …” he says and pauses a few seconds. “Okay, you’re brilliant. I owe you. No, I’m not going to say that, goodbye Baekhyun”.

Chanyeol hangs up on his best friend as a goofy smile spreads on his face.

The man is smoking a cigarette when he turns back towards him and enters the hospital again. There’s a certain spring to his steps as he continues through corridors until he reaches the ICU and even Sehee looks up at him with a question burning in her eyes. She doesn’t ask and Chanyeol doesn’t tell her.

As he’s staring in through the door, he silently promises Minseok that he will find the cure. If the government won’t do it, Chanyeol will.

---

“You guys are idiots,” Sookyung says. She’s staring at the large glass door in front of them, LAB 32 carved across the glass in cursive. It looks ridiculously fancy for the enormous laboratory hiding behind the doors.

They’re standing outside of it, while Baekhyun tries to convince a security guard inside that he’s here to have a meeting with a chemist. Chanyeol looks towards Sookyung and shrugs a little. He’s fumbling with a paper in his pocket, trying to keep his nerves in check.

Baekhyun might be a mathematician and a professor in math at SNU but he is not, in any way, very good at convincing people. He doesn’t emerge back outside, however, and with every passing minute, the hope grows within Chanyeol.

“It’s going to work, just wait,” Chanyeol says. “You married Baekhyun, you know how brilliant he is.”

Sookyung raises an eyebrow in disbelief.

“I married him, so I know exactly what dumb ideas he comes up with sometimes. I don’t get why you humor him.”

Chanyeol chuckles but doesn’t answer.

“You’re an idiot,” she repeats. “I miss Minseok.”

And Chanyeol doesn’t have any doubt that’s true. They all do, Chanyeol probably more than his friends, but he gets it. Minseok has always been a part of their group. When Baekhyun started dating Sookyung, it felt a little awkward.

Chanyeol didn’t like third wheeling but Baekhyun didn’t want to exclude him. So when Chanyeol met Minseok, he immediately became a part of their small inner circle. At first it had felt strange to include someone so new, but only after two months had Chanyeol realized he wanted Minseok forever and Sookyung had threatened him to never get rid of Minseok lest he left her in their company alone. It hadn’t been a problem.

“I miss him too,” he whispers and his heart aches at the thought. They stay in silence after that and Chanyeol forces himself to stop thinking of losing Minseok and instead hoping for the best.

When Baekhyun emerges, however, it’s with very slumped shoulders and downcast eyes.

“Well?” Sookyung asks, comforting hand on his shoulder contradicting her deadpan tone.

“She’s dead,” he says and looks up to get eye contact with Chanyeol. “I told the security guard I had arranged a meeting with Kim Junghwa like you said I should, and it took some time before he finally admitted she has passed away.”

Chanyeol’s brain stops thinking. This is information he cannot process right now. How did Junghwa die? If she is dead, then who is left? How are they going to get any information? How did she even die? It might not have anything to do with the virus, but she was Minseok’s coworker so there is a possibility that she, too, had been in contact with it.

Now that Junghwa is dead, however, he doesn’t have any means to confirm whether or not the accidental discovery was related to the virus. Chanyeol doesn’t know more of Minseok’s coworkers so Lab 32 is useless as a clue now. There is no way he’s going to get any information from that. Chanyeol also doesn’t know anything about Junghwa outside of her name and that isn’t enough to dig into her medical files.

It’s also illegal, but he guesses trying to find a terrorist with a deadly virus is also sort of illegal.

Baekhyun reaches a hand around Sookyung’s shoulder and she leans against his side. Chanyeol stares at them. His mind is still trying to figure out what to do with the knowledge that Junghwa has died, but as he watches his two best friends stand there, cuddling closer ever so slightly, his heart shrinks a little and skips a beat in fear. It comes like lightning from a blue sky, when he’s struck by strong feelings of loss.

Watching Baekhyun and Sookyung springs back memories, memories he doesn’t want to think about when the alternative right now is Minseok in the hospital. Memories that only cements how much he truly fears losing his boyfriend.

Memories that highlights the ups and the downs of their relationship, memories of Baekhyun mocking him for being cringy in love or memories of Minseok defending his silly boyfriend. Memories of gushing about the beautiful boy he had fallen in love with in college and memories of carefully hidden hand-holding before they went official to their friends and families. Memories of heart flutters and pink cheeks and strong feelings of overwhelming love.

And Chanyeol is about to lose it all if he doesn’t find the terrorist, the anti-virus.

He turns around on his heels, tears threatening to spill down his cheeks, and leaves his friends on the sidewalk, calling after him. He doesn’t stop before he’s a good 3 kilometers from the lab and only when he stops, does he sit down and rethink everything.

---

“Where have you been?”

Baekhyun is screaming at him in frustration, blocking the front door to his apartment. Sookyung leans against the wall, staring at him with a deadly glare.

“I tried calling you like 30 times!”

Chanyeol looks at his phone, interrupting Baekhyun for a few seconds. There are 37 missed calls from him and 3 from Sookyung.

“40 times,” he corrects and Baekhyun narrows his eyes in anger and worry.

“You ing just left, you bastard! I couldn’t get ahold of you!”

“He made me call you too,” Sookyung intersects and Baekhyun sends her a glare for interrupting him.

“Point is, you left us while crying. We were just standing on the sidewalk, knowing nothing. Do you even understand what went through my mind?”

He’s seething but afraid. Chanyeol can hear it in his voice. Underneath the pure rage lies an undertone of worry.

“You should worry more if Minseok,” Chanyeol starts but he can’t get himself to finish.

“Don’t you dare…” Sookyung threatens and Chanyeol swallows a lump. Baekhyun crosses his arms in front of his chest and glares at Chanyeol.

“You’re not leaving my sight if Mins…”

“Don’t say it!” Sookyung shouts, very uncharacteristic of her. Both men look at her and she is holding herself, staring at them with a steel glance. Chanyeol nods.

Their neighbor peaks out of her front door in confusion and Sookyung sends her a small wave in apology for shouting.

Inside the apartment the silence is stifling. Baekhyun is still angry at Chanyeol for leaving, Sookyung is on edge with the thought of losing a close friend and Chanyeol is a little frustrated at the entire situation. He doesn’t want to say anything to aggravate Baekhyun more, so he broods in silence as he rethinks everything. He’s thought everything so often by now that it’s starting to make less sense than it did in the beginning.

His grief is clouded by determination, but he doesn’t dare voice it out loud with Baekhyun sitting in his armchair, tapping his foot impatiently on the floor. The wall clock in the kitchen indicates time ticking by until they all three sigh in unison and give up on keeping quiet.

“I’m sorry,” Chanyeol says, directed at Baekhyun. Baekhyun deflates a little and stops tapping his foot on the floor.

“I’m sorry too. I just got worried,” he says and Chanyeol smiles at him. He knows. It’s a best friend privilege to be worried and Chanyeol isn’t mad at him for worrying. Perhaps still a little frustrated with the 40 unanswered calls, but not his feelings.

“Do you still want to help me? I completely understand if you’ve had enough of my shenanigans. I get that I’m a bit frustrating to be around without Minseok to …”

He can’t say it. Voicing it out loud makes it real and Chanyeol has made a point of focusing solely on the search for the virus to avoid reminding himself of the grave reality. He may have spent weeks in the hospital but those are not in vain and he’s not ready to grieve just yet.

“You’re frustrating to be around when Minseok is here as well,” Sookyung says but there’s a light tilt to her voice and a small smirk on her face.

“And yes. You’re not going to face a guy with a deadly virus all by yourself.”

Baekhyun is also smiling slightly and Chanyeol’s eyes light up with friendly love. Sookyung pokes Baekhyun’s side with a sharp finger and he winces and looks confused at his wife.

“Who says it’s a guy?” she asks and Chanyeol chuckles as Baekhyun forgets his words. There is only one woman in South Korea capable of deliberately killing innocent people and thankfully Chanyeol is friends with her.

---

“Hey Chanyeol,” Luhan says melodically and whistles a tune from the couch. Mei Tao sits at the kitchen table, peeling an orange and watching news on the TV.

“What are you up to? Is your boyfriend any better or still in the ICU?”

Chanyeol feels the sting in his heart but shrugs and grunts a non-committal answer.

“Oh, that bad. When are you coming back to work? Joonmyun is constantly complaining about partnering up with that… what was his name?” he asks towards Mei Tao.

“Chenle.”

“Yeah, that. New guy, very young,” Luhan says. “Anyway, Joonmyun misses you terribly even though he doesn’t say it like that.”

Chanyeol just shakes his head and turns back to the computer screen in front of him. He’s about to do something bad. Something that Joonmyun most definitely wouldn’t approve of, so he’s sort of happy it’s his Chinese coworkers here. Luhan might snoop over his shoulder and Mei Tao is usually very uncouth with everybody but her children but at least they’re not going to say anything or report him to the authorities for looking at medical files he shouldn’t be looking at.

Finding Junghwa proves a little difficult with only her name, but he eventually finds a Kim Junghwa, born in 1994, who is dead. He swallows a lump when he reads her age. Chanyeol can’t imagine what her parents might be going through, losing a daughter that young. Somewhere deep inside he hopes it’s a traffic accident or a long medical history of terminal disease, that has no relation to the virus. It wouldn’t help him in his search, but it might ease the pain of knowing he could’ve done something.

That they, the government, could have done something to prevent a 25-year old woman’s death. Cause of death is stated as cardiac arrest, but there are no prior mention of heart disease and her parents didn’t allow for an autopsy. She was found in her bed, but when the paramedics arrived, they concluded she had already passed away and there was nothing they could do to save her.

Chanyeol drags his hands over his face, lets them rest over his eyes for a second or two before he turns back to the lit screen and closes the program. While he can’t confirm for sure, cardiac arrest with no prior heart disease in such a young age suggests she fell victim to the virus, hypothermia getting the better of her. Chanyeol thinks of Minseok and how, if he hadn’t awakened in the middle of the night, it might have been him waking up to a dead boyfriend. A presence looms over his shoulder and a warm breath touches his ear.

“Whatcha doing?” Luhan asks and chews the last piece of his sandwich into Chanyeol’s ear.

“Ew, you’re gross, get away from me.”

Luhan looks affronted but leans back anyway. Chanyeol glares at him but doesn’t answer the question. Luhan is about to ask again when the alarm sounds and Mei Tao jumps from the table where she’s playing on her tablet.

“ing hell,” they hear her mutter. Luhan sends him a smile and shrugs his shoulders as he turns his back to Chanyeol and walks towards the ambulance. Chanyeol looks after them as they leave the station and feels a little sting in his heart, a dash of disappointment that it isn’t him that’s going to help someone in distress. He needs to get back to work again.

Sehee looks at him unimpressed when he stands in front of her. There’s silence between them even though the ICU is busy and noisy.

“How is he?” Chanyeol asks, smile tugging at his lips. Sehee raises an eyebrow.

“Condition stable, unchanged. Chanyeol, I know it hurts but you have to do something else with your life other than being stuck in the ICU. I promised you I would call if there was even the slightest change in his condition.”

Chanyeol winces a little.

“I know Sehee and I have been doing other things.”

She scoffs. He ignores her. He has been doing other things. He hangs out with Baekhyun and Sookyung occasionally as he tries to unravel the whole virus-thing that the government doesn’t take seriously.

“I’m going to see Minseok.” He passes the reception desk and ignores her eyes on his back. Dressed up and standing in front of his boyfriend, Chanyeol lets out a shaky breath. There’s a steady sound of the machinery all around Minseok, a distressing promise that nothing has changed. He lets a gloved finger over his face, lets it run down his forehead, onto the tip of his nose before he traces the philtrum and lets it rest on his lips. He wants to dip down and kiss them, but at the same time he doesn’t want the cold, unresponsive kiss.

He wants Minseok to wake up like a fairytale and kiss him back, tell him he’s being foolish and stupid for worrying so much, but Chanyeol isn’t that dumb and so he settles for a kiss to the top of his head. He doesn’t care if someone is looking in through the door to make sure he doesn’t do anything stupid. Chanyeol is too far gone in love with the man in the hospital bed in front of him.

“I love you. I’m going to find the bastard who did this to you.”

When he leaves the ICU Sehee looks after him, audibly sighing.