Minjung is relentless on her. And Kyungha’s not the only one who's noticed. Jongdae and Suzy have shown their concern, but as always, she’d brushed them off. She’d rather have people not worry about her, especially if her step-sister was going rampant for no reason.

In the past week, Kyungha couldn’t remember the last time she had an actual meal. She simply had no time. Not with the sudden volume of outpatients. Not with Minjung demanding a report for everything. The girl had wanted Kyungha to do all of her paperwork, which meant Kyungha had to handle all of her outpatients and Minjung’s patients.

If any of her peers noticed, they haven’t said anything. Mainly because Minjung’s personality was bright, and because she had a pretty face along with it, no one found any fault in her.

Joohyun and Seulgi were worried and offered to help her on numerous occasions, but Kyungha felt a strong sense of responsibility. It wasn’t their burden to bear. She didn’t want to feel like she was taking advantage of her friends.

She let her friends hang around to talk about Minjung, but Kyungha took on the weight of doing her tasks by herself.

When her shift ended, she was too tired to go home, so she let her foot lead her to room 1308.

The room is empty when Kyungha enters. Yawning, she kicks off her shoes and passes out on Sehun’s bunk.

A few hours later, she feels someone shake her. Kyungha opens her eyes groggily to see Sehun smile at her. “Mm?”

“Move over, sweetheart.”

Kyungha rolls over, facing the wall. She feels Sehun lie down, tightening his arm around her waist. His breath is warm against her neck.

“Is your shift over?” She murmurs sleepily.

“It is.”

Kyungha continues, “why didn’t you go home?”

“Why didn’t you go home?”

“Because I wanted to see you,” she whispers.

“You are…” His laugh rattles against her. It sounds like a mixture of disbelief and amusement. “Oh, sweetheart. What are you doing to me?”

“Being honest,” she responds bluntly, feeling Sehun’s chin graze the top of her head.

“You’re already going through with our promise?”

A tired, running-on-two-hours-of-sleep Kyungha was disastrous. Her thoughts fly wildly in her head, so she doesn’t bother filtering out any of her words. Kyungsoo’s told her that she’s more honest when she’s on the brink of sleep. And yes, of course, there was also that promise that they’d shared.

She could feel the consequence of her honesty possibly coming back to bite her, but for now, Kyungha likes the freedom of speaking the truth. She likes how good it feels not having to mask her emotions. So, she continues.

“I’m just tired of being hurt.”

He pauses. “By me?”

She shakes her head. “By me,” she answers instead. Because this was the truth. Kyungha spent her entire life running away from the truth. She spent her youth hiding from people because of her fear of not being accepted by society.

But because she hid all the time, she was lonely. And then she met Sehun who was always as bright as the sun. He smiled all the time, laughed at everything, talked to everyone. It didn’t matter if you were a stranger or someone he disliked, he’d talk to you and made you feel important. She didn’t understand how he could do it. Put himself out there for people to judge and talk about—but he did it, regardless of what he went through.

When Kyungha was young, she’d gotten a glimpse of Sehun’s ingenuity. He was extraordinarily smart under his mask of the high school party boy. Like her, she could tell he hid from the world too.

They were only different in the ways they interacted with the world itself, but she could feel at a basic level, they were essentially the same. Geniuses who were afraid of being hurt—afraid of not being accepted by others.

Kyungha shifts her weight onto her other side so she could face him.

“When I was little, I had a friend before I transferred to a private school. Her name was Heejoo, and she was a transfer student so she didn’t know much about me. In the first few weeks, she wasn’t put off by how closed I was. She was the only girl in my grade that would talk to me. Eventually, she was influenced by my classmates. And at that time, it was a cool thing for first graders to ostracize other first graders who weren’t like them.

Girls my age liked barbie dolls, and they liked to talk about boys. I didn’t like boys. Not at the time, anyway. My first interaction with a boy was him pushing me down on the asphalt. So, I couldn’t understand why my female classmates liked to chase after the opposite gender. What was the appeal? So they could call you ugly?

Anyway, Heejoo wanted to be like everyone else. She eventually did that, but she’d stayed away from harassing me. Instead, she chose to stop talking to me instead, which hurt more. Because she was still nice to me behind everyone’s back, but then when we were around others, she’d give me the cold shoulders.

One day she told me boys don’t like girls who are smarter than them. I asked her why, and she said because that’s how the world works. I asked her why it mattered between us, and she answered because you’re the weird one and if you wanted me to like you then you should change who you are.

When I woke up the next day, I suddenly understood why I felt like I never belonged anywhere. Because I was an embarrassment—an eyesore. If it was so easy to change, I would’ve done it already. But I couldn’t. I couldn’t pretend to be someone I wasn’t. And the weight of the realization was crushing. I felt helpless. Alone in the world. And I cried. It was the hardest I’ve ever cried in my entire life. But after I had a meltdown, I came to another realization.

I figured that it was useless to cry because it didn’t do anything for me. It wasn’t going to suddenly give me friends or give me a sense of security and belonging that I wanted.

So from that day on, I vowed to never cry again, and I haven’t since then. Not for fifteen years. I stayed away from friendships. I stayed away from having to reveal myself.

I finally felt safe that way—a sense of relief. And it was easy. All I had to do was hide. Then, I wouldn’t have to feel pain again.”

Kyungha stops to laugh bitterly. Sehun proceeds to squeeze her thigh, circling his thumb on her skin. “Then I met you, Oh Sehun. You who showed me that I didn’t have to be alone to feel safe. Obviously, I didn’t want to accept you. Because that would mean that I’d have to admit that I lived my entire life wrong. You know how I much I hate being wrong. So, I resorted to keeping you at an arm’s length. We were physically close, sure, but I’d never let you affect me inside. I closed off my heart, and it had felt like the safest thing at the time.

But it didn’t work because you’d always find a way to get past it. And then you made me want to open myself up. I was afraid—I’m still afraid to let you in. What if I had to suddenly come to terms with the fact that the only person who gave me the sense of security and belonging that I’ve always wanted didn’t want to be around me anymore?

I can’t live with that. I don't know if I have the mental capacity to survive that.”

Sehun is silent as he threads his fingers through her hair. She closes her eyes, leaning into his chest.

And then he’s doing it again. His fingers drumming against her skin in its little erratic rhythm. “Do you want to know why I do this?”

Kyungha hums a quiet answer.

“Guess,” he teases, ghosting his fingers on her skin. She shivers.

“Too much work,” she murmurs.

“Sweetheart, I swear…” He chuckles into her hair. Sighing in resignation, he begins, “because you’re the only one in this entire world who makes my heart fall when you’re angry or sad—or hurt because of me.” He exhales shakily. “And then. The next minute, you make me my heart soar like nobody’s business. When I’m with you, I feel like I’m in high school again, sprinting around a track, miles ahead of everyone with only the wind roaring in my ears. I’m free. Completely unrestrained. I’m just me. I don’t have to pretend. I don’t have to think about my mother. I don’t have to feel the guilt of Dad’s disappointment weighing me down.

When I’m running, I like to keep the tempo using the sound of my shoes slamming into the surface of the ground. But when I’m with you, I have to resort to my fingers, matching my heartbeat and the pace of my thoughts.

And the reason why it’s imperfect is because when I’m with you, I don’t need to be the perfect version of myself.” He blows a raspberry. “Let’s be honest, you don’t fall for any of it anyway. Not my charm. Not my pretty face. You see me as I am. You see more into me than anyone else in my life.

You’re a mixture of amazing, funny, gorgeous, selfless, and stupidly witty all in one. You can piss me off one second, but the next, I feel like I can laugh forever, and there’d be no consequences. You make me feel a million things in the span of nothing. So one day when I’m found dead on the side of the street from a heart attack, it’s completely your fault.”

Kyungha falls into an unrestrained laugh. “So what’s your point, Mr. Suave?”

He laughs into her ear. “Let go, sweetheart. Because I’ll be here to catch you when you fall.”

Kyungha stretches her sore legs. She’d been standing for a few hours now. As she’s about to take a seat on one of the lounge chairs, an alarm sounds in the hospital.

There’s a code blue. Kyungha checks the time. It’s midmorning again. Honestly, being a doctor made her feel like she lost her sense of time. She sprints to the room number being called, but anxiety pricks at her when she gets closer to the pediatric ward.

“No. No. No, please, no,” she chants. Kyungha sprints into Dani’s room. The nurse meets her eyes with franticness. “What’s wrong?” Her voice is shaking. Not Dani. Anyone but her. She felt terrible for asking that, but Dani was special. She’d deserved more than this.

The nurse, Emmy, reports, “she’s going into v-fib.”

Kyungha rushes to her bedside, swiftly pulling the covers away from a still Dani. Trying to stay calm, she begins positioning the girl. Then, Kyungha climbs onto her bed, beginning chest compressions.

“AED is here!” Emmy shouts, rolling the machine in.

Kyungha scrambles to find scissors. As she cuts through the fabric, the pair gets jammed, and Kyungha ends up ripping the fabric away in desperation.

Shaking, she reaches for the gel, slathering it on Dani’s chest.

“Charge for 70 joules. Clear! Come on, come on.” Kyungha swipes her sleeves over her forehead, continuing chest compressions.

Emmy holds out the paddles, and she grabs them. “Charge for 75 joules. Clear!” She watches Dani’s body jolt with the electricity. Kyungha exhales sharply. “Please, Dani, please come back.”

Kyungha continues to push against the little girl’s chest.

Emmy’s eyes grow weary as she watches the heart monitor. Kyungha’s ears ring when Emmy reveals the worst. “Doctor, she’s going into asystole.”

“No, !” Kyungha hisses. “Dani, no. God, please, come back.” The sweat burns her eyes. “How long has it been since v-fib?”

“Eight minutes,” Emmy answers.

Kyungha doesn’t stop chest compressions. Not Dani. The universe can’t take away another sweet soul, not this little girl. This gorgeous, charming girl who’d geek off on Star Wars and astronomy. The girl who’d refused to sleep if she didn’t get her bedtime story. The girl who wrapped her little arms around Kyungha despite not knowing what was going on.

Another minute passes. Still nothing. Kyungha’s lips tremble, and it takes her sheer willpower to push through her sore, shaky arms. She doesn’t stop chanting please like a mantra. It’s the only thing keeping Kyungha from falling apart.

And another minute passes.

Emmy reaches to stop her. “Doctor, I think you should call it.”

Kyungha can’t call it. Not Dani. Not her friend, this little girl who barely saw the world. She didn’t deserve to die. “No,” she manages. “I won’t.”

The heart monitor lets out, the intrusive long beep deafening. She relents. Her mind and heart torn in two pieces. She knew the facts, but she didn’t want to accept it. Kyungha chokes on a sob. With the last bit of her strength, she raises her right arm, dropping it on Dani’s chest with a thud.

It reverberates within her, her teeth chattering.

Emmy has resigned to sniffling, and Kyungha feels her strength leaving her. It was over. She’d just lost someone she’d care about.

Standing on weak legs, she felt a wave of nausea come over her. “Seo Dani. Time of dea—“

Beeeeep. Beeeep. Beep. Beep. Beep.

Kyungha freezes. She feels the breath knocked right out of her. Emmy drops her hand in absolute shock.

“She’s stabilizing.”

Kyungha’s knees give and she falls.

“Doctor! Are you okay?” Emmy rushes to her, helping her up.

“I’m fine,” she answers unsteadily. The urge to vomit is strong.

At this time, one of the nightshift attending rushes in. “What’s her condition?” He asks, quickly rubbing hand sanitizer all over his hands.

“She was in v-fib and then her heart stopped, but we brought her back,” Kyungha answers, attempting to remain level headed when in fact she needed to throw up all of her stomach’s content.

The attending nods, pressing his hands on Dani’s chest. The sound of wheezing suddenly fills the room.

Kyungha’s calm and rationality flies out of her almost immediately. “Is she okay? Why is she—?”

The attending pulls out his stethoscope, checking her breathing sounds. “Her lungs. There’s something wrong…get the ultrasound machine.”

Emmy runs out of the room, quickly returning within minutes. Kyungha moves to stand on the opposite side of the attending. He runs the strobe on her chest. They check the screen.

Her stomach drops.

“There’s fluid in her lungs.”

The attending shoots her a look of disbelief. “What are you standing there for? Intubate her!”

Kyungha scrambles to her feet, doing as she’s told.

Emmy pales when the attending exchanges looks between the two girls. “Does she have a lung condition I should be aware of?”

Kyungha shakes her head, focusing on squeezing the Ambu bag. “As far as I’m concerned, she’s only diagnosed with cardiomyopathy.”

Emmy gasps, “x-ray. I think we need an x-ray.”

The doctor narrows his eyes. “What do you mean?”

“Her ribs may be broken,” Kyungha answers. Fear rips through her. “I think I broke her ribs.”

“I want her out!” Kyungha bites her lips, trying to shut out the shrill scream. “Get her out of my sight! She did this to my daughter!”

“Ms. Seo, I need you to calm—“ Sehun attempts to mediate by placing his arm on both of her shoulders. The woman struggles, face flushed with anger as she focuses her beady eyes on Kyungha.

“You’re not a ing doctor! If she doesn’t wake up, I’m suing this damn place! I’ll make sure you lose your job.”

“Mam,” Sehun’s voice cuts through the angry shouting.

She breaks out of his grip and rushes toward Kyungha. The air is knocked from her lungs when she’s pushed backward. Her head slams against the hard composite wall.

There’s a rush of people who jump to break the woman from Kyungha. “Kyungha, are you okay?” Seulgi asks but her voice sounds distant.

The white noise stretches, leaving her confused as to why everyone was suddenly in her space. The nausea returns and Kyungha dry heaves. It’s violent and hurts her ribs. She feels cold sweat forming on her skin.

“Kyungha?” She can’t really tell whose voice is whose anymore, but Kyungha thinks it’s Sehun. Her balance sways, and she slips but she’s caught mid-air. Her eyes flutter close. Then, his smell is the last thing she remembers before everything goes black.

She wakes with a start, springing up. Kyungha’s right arm is weighed down by something. She turns her head to see that she’s hooked up to a heart monitor and an IV.

Sehun tells her to take a deep breath, but she doesn’t understand why until her mind feels foggy, and oh, of course, she wasn’t breathing again.

“What happened? Is Dani okay?” She blurts, trying to get out of bed.

Sehun pushes her back down. “Sweetheart. Stop resisting me. You have a concussion, and on top of that, you’re malnourished. Kyungha, why are you neglecting yourself like this?”

Kyungha shakes her head. “I’m fine. I need to—I need to know if she’s okay.”

He sighs, running a hand through his hair. “Dani’s in surgery. Her ribs were fractured and a piece punctured her left lung.”

“It’s my fault,” she concludes, voice strained.

Sehun frowns, grabbing her by the shoulders. “Sweetheart, no. You saved her life. She was asystole. You did what you had to—“

“She’s in surgery because of me.”

“Would you rather she be in surgery or dead?”

Kyungha is stunned into silence. “I—“

Sehun sits on her bedside, wrapping his arms over her. “You’re in shock, sweetheart. It happens to everyone. Stop blaming yourself. You didn’t kill her. You helped her, and things went wrong, sure. Life happens, and you have to pick yourself back up.”

Kyungha trembles, and then everything she’d held in comes rushing out like a geyser. An explosion of feelings and the lock on her proverbial chest box shatters. It’s come undone.

An awful sound echoes in the empty room. A sob. And it’s coming from her. Kyungha quickly swipes her fingers across her face hurriedly, trying to do damage control, but it won’t stop coming out. And she can’t get a handle on the flare of pain that stabs through her facade.

Sehun grabs her hands to keep her from rubbing her face off. He’s holding out against her struggling, crying—shouting.

It’s completely, ing crazy. If Kyungha could see herself right now, she wouldn’t be able to recognize this girl.

This wasn’t her. She didn’t cry. She absolutely didn’t lose her like this. Never.

But to her dismay, it is her. There was no mistaking it. The reflection of a wild-eyed, messy hair, splotchy-cheeked girl stares back at her from the glass window. She gasps, letting her hands fall limb.

And then his voice echoes in her head, let go, sweetheart, because I’ll be here to catch you when you fall.

Kyungha presses her tear-stricken cheeks against the crook of his shoulder, twisting her knuckles into his shirt. She’d hoped he’d gotten the message.

Catch me, Oh Sehun.

The night stretched on until dusk painted the sky. It was just the two of them. Alone. Encompassed by the steady beep of the heart monitor. Kyungha counts inside her head. One, two.

Just one broken girl and one silent boy who’s holding her broken pieces as she lets every bit of the ugly out.