The skies are blue, and birds are singing soft melodies into the spring afternoon. The cherry blossom trees have finally bloomed and there’s a certain softness to the world, a hope that all is well, and everything will be just fine sooner rather than later. People smile more often, they shed their winter coats and new couples pop up like flowers blooming in the fields. Spring is here and it is here to stay as the sun warms up the Korean soil.

Except within Yixing. The joys of spring have gone unnoticed, and a metaphorical thundercloud looms over him and threatens rain with every moment. His usually dimpled smile has been replaced with a constant crease between his eyebrows and his temper has become short-fused, ready to snap over the smallest things. He knows the nurses are whispering behind their hands as they watch him growl in frustration at his computer screen or lose patience with questions from the junior residents. They’re wondering what has happened to the gentle, patient Dr. Zhang they all know and like.

Yixing has lost himself too. He hates feeling like this, and he doesn’t really know how to process it; anger is not a common emotion for him. But it’s anger he feels now, or at least he thinks it is; he's angry at himself for all the ways in which he’s failed. It is him who has a hereditary genetic disease. It is him who can’t fulfil his responsibility to carry on the family line. He feels like there's a scream all coiled up tight inside his chest, unable to get out. He wants to let it out, cry it all out into open space, but he doesn't know how. The other staff are making allowances for him, blaming it on the stress of his recent surgery and the blood disorder that makes it so much harder for his body to heal, but he knows it’s no excuse for his behaviour. He should be able to control himself and he’s failing to do that too. It all just keeps piling on top of each other and he feels under so much pressure that he doesn't know what to do with it.

“Dr. Zhang?” Yixing doesn’t recognize the voice calling his name. It’s probably the new oncology nurse. He frowns down at the journal article he’s trying to read. The article is badly written, the references oblique and pointless. He wants to slam it down on the desk, and slam his head down too.

“What is it now?” His fingers hover over the page he was about to turn, but he doesn’t look up. He’s supposed to be on a break; can’t they leave him alone for even a few minutes?

“Someone is here to see you.”

Yixing looks up to see his wife, dressed in casual clothing, next to the new nurse. Sudden shame strikes him. He was unnecessarily rude, and now Songmi has caught him out. He should apologize to the nurse, but she disappears before he can say anything. Songmi walks over to stand in front of his desk.

“What is it? Did you forget your keys again?” Yixing tries to speak pleasantly, but the effort only makes his words come out oddly flat. Songmi shakes her head, looking serious.

“No. I spoke to Chief Moon and got you off early. We’re going.” She jerks her head at the door, and Yixing puts the journal down.

“Going where?”

“I’ll tell you later. We don’t have all day, get changed.”

He’s rarely seen her look at him so severely. Yixing swallows back the complaint that wants to burst out of him about her just reorganizing his schedule without consulting him. He stands up and crosses the office to where his jacket hangs behind the door. Songmi just watches him with arms crossed over her chest. As he changes he tries to smooth his frown away, but he doesn’t think he’s entirely successful.

When he’s ready Songmi takes his hand and pulls him out into the hallway. Her serious face has morphed into concern as she looks up at him, but she doesn't say anything more. When the elevator arrives it’s crammed full of people and they’re squeezed up against the wall as it makes the trip down to basement level three. The car beeps as Songmi unlocks it, getting into the driver's seat without questioning. Yixing hasn't managed to drive again since the accident, irrational dread striking him every time he thinks about sitting behind the wheel, even though he's fine in the passenger side. He bites his lip as he gets into the car. He should be driving, not making his wife navigate the city traffic. He's failing her in so many ways he's losing count.

Songmi starts the car and drives up the basement ramps without saying a word. Yixing fiddles with the radio stations for a while to break the silence, eventually settling on one playing the latest pop hits. The cheerful beats feel out of place in the tense atmosphere, but it’s better than wallowing in doom and gloom.

It’s not until Songmi drives onto the entry ramp for the highway leading out of the city that confusion prompts him to speak. He'd assumed they were going home. “Where are we going?”

Songmi quickly casts a glance in his direction before returning her attention to the road.

“To my parents’ cabin near Seoraksan.”

“Why?”

“Because you have been acting like a complete jerk since the accident, and I refuse to let it continue any longer.” Songmi doesn’t look at him, but there’s a hint of anger in her voice. Guilt and shame join Yixing's frustration and tie themselves into a tight knot in his chest. He swallows as he stares out of the window. He never intended to be a jerk, least of all to Songmi. That's not who he is, or not who he thought he was. Maybe he was only a good person when things were going well for him. The idea makes him truly loathe himself.

Songmi tries to apologize halfway to Seoraksan. Yixing shrugs. “It’s fine,” he says, and spends the last hour of the journey gazing at the increasingly mountainous country, the vapid pop songs on the radio going in one ear and out the other until they arrive at the cabin in Seoraksan National Park.

Songmi pulls up outside the cabin. The mountain pines are a vivid dark green against the lighter greens of the leaves and budding flowers of the seasonal trees, and the ground cover is flowering too. The air is cleaner and colder than the city, and the sun gently brushes the mountain ridges with a soft golden light, but Yixing’s mood has turned from frustration to bleak depression and he barely notices how beautiful it is. He goes to the back of the car and helps her unload the luggage she’s packed. She’s brought his acoustic guitar too in its hard black case. Yixing hasn’t touched his guitar in months and suddenly it feels appealing to lose himself in playing.

Once everything is inside, he finds a spot on a wooden chest in the corner, takes out his guitar and tunes by ear while Songmi brews coffee. Once tuned, he begins to play. He knows he’s being avoidant, because she won’t attempt to talk to him while he’s playing, but he doesn’t want to talk, doesn't want to try and explain what's wrong with him when he doesn't really understand it himself. The steel strings press into his fingertips and the varnished wood is cool and smooth against his body as he coaxes melodies from the strings, never stopping between pieces, fuguing and improvising wherever the music takes him. Songmi puts coffee beside him, but he ignores it. He bends over his guitar and lets himself drift in the music, and hours pass this way.

He only looks up when the light flicks on, illumining the wooden cabin in golden light. He hadn’t realised it had gotten so dark. Songmi gets up from the couch and walks towards the kitchen, probably intending to start dinner. Yixing notices that she’s put the book she was reading face down on the table, bending the spine instead of closing it properly. He bites back the comment that rises up, his mother hated it when he treated books that way and the habit has carried on with him, but he’s just managed to find a little peace through playing and he doesn’t want to ruin it all. He puts his guitar aside and gets up to pick up the book. Casting his eyes around for something to use as a bookmark, he sees a brochure on the table. It’s from a private company called Medical Avenue and on the front it says IVF in large white letters. The letters send a jolt through him. All the guilt, pain, failure and frustration all come crowding back like a tidal wave, and he snatches the brochure up from the table and storms into the kitchen.

“Why do you have this?” he asks. Songmi turns around from where she’s been getting a chopping board from the cupboard. She looks at the brochure, then back at him.

“Because IVF is the next logical step from here. I was just looking for ideas,” she replies, and takes the brochure from his hand.

“Why do you keep pushing this? Can't you just accept it? We can’t have kids!” It stuns Yixing as much as it stuns Songmi. She stares at him as the emotions he's been holding down flood out of him, his voice sounding raw with pain. “Say we try IVF. We pump you full of chemicals and for what? It probably won’t even work, we’ll try for years and just keep failing over and over again and I'll have to feel like this for the whole time. Even if it does miraculously work someday, the kid might end up with the haemophilia gene and I'll have passed a life-threatening illness to our grandchildren. I can't give you children, Songmi. I’ve failed you, don’t you get it?” His voice cracks as tears start to blur his vision. “Why do we need kids anyway? We were happy before, Songmi, we were happy with just each other and now...”

Songmi’s eyes are huge with shock as she stares at him. Tears are running down his cheeks now, consuming his words. The worst part of it all is that Yixing wants children. He hadn’t really thought much about it until she suggested it, but once the idea was in his mind, he'd wanted it so badly. He’d looked forward so much to the pregnancy test coming back positive, to preparing the house and buying a crib and toys and baby clothes, to bringing a new person into the world, a little part of him and Songmi both, and the joy of seeing them grow up and go through life. Now there will be no child, only the guilt and the heavy weight of failure every time he thinks of what they might have had.

A small hand pulls at his fingers and gently pulls him across the room and down onto the couch. He leans forward and hides his wet face in his hands. Songmi gently caresses his back, hand moving up and down in a soothing manner. Yixing feels horrible. He hadn’t meant to go overboard like this; he hadn’t wanted to hurt Songmi.

“Yixing,” a soft voice sounds from beside him and he lifts his face from his hands to look at his wife. She looks sad. “Why didn’t you tell me all this?”

“I didn’t want to hurt you, I know you want to try but it's just so overwhelming, there are so many expectations on me and if it doesn't work I'm going to fail you again and I don't know how long I can handle feeling like this…”

Songmi scoots closer and rests her head on his shoulder.

“Have I been pushing you towards treatment instead of listening to what you really wanted?” she asks. Yixing turns to her in surprise.

“No,” he says automatically, before he realizes maybe she's right. He sighs. “I don’t know, it all just felt so overwhelming. I didn’t get to process it at all because of the accident, and the second I started to recover it was all IVF everywhere and…”

Songmi nods. “I’m really sorry, honey. I didn’t mean to pressure you. I just thought this was what we wanted, and I wasn’t put off by the treatment, so I assumed you wouldn’t be either. It was unfair to you.”

They look at each other in silence, but it’s no longer heavy. There is still a difficult topic to discuss, but the friction that wedged itself between them in the past month has gone. Yixing lets go of her hand so he can wrap his arms around her and pull her close. Her hair shampoo smells exactly like it normally does. There is nothing out of the ordinary in the hug itself, but it feels tremendous. After weeks of turmoil, having no hidden emotions between them feels like being woken from a nightmare.

“How about we forget about kids and treatments and adoption and everything that comes with it for a while, until you're ready to think about it again. It's important that you don't feel pressured, baby. There's no rush,” she says, holding him a little tighter. Yixing pushes his face into her hair and closes his eyes. Forgetting about it all sounds like an excellent idea. He won't have to worry or stress out. They can just go back to the way it was.

---

Jongin is the last to leave the multidisciplinary care review. He’d gotten distracted by looking up a Pubmed reference the oncologist had mentioned on his phone, and by the time he’s gone through the abstract and decided it’s worth saving to read later, the room is empty. He gathers up his armful of patient files from the table, stacks his notebook on top of them, and drags the fogged-glass sliding door closed behind him as he leaves.

The meeting room is the last in the row of small ones right at the back of the ground floor, past the bigger conference rooms and the two lecture theatres, and the buzzing of the foyer and cafeteria area at the front of the building can barely be heard. It’s quiet and feels empty, but as Jongin walks past the other rooms, movement catches the corner of his eye. He glances over automatically to see a couple of people inside the room he’s passing, figures blurry through the fogged glass wall. One person is hanging their head, shoulders hunched. Even as the submissive posture registers with Jongin, the second person raises a hand and slaps them across the face.

Jongin’s heart stops for a moment that feels like eternity, then starts up again way too fast, leaving him dizzy from the rush of blood. There’s a heavy thump and a fluttering noise, and it takes him a second too long to understand he’s dropped his armful of files and they’ve burst open on hitting the floor, scattering loose leaves of paper everywhere. He doesn’t move to pick them up. He can’t take his eyes off the figures through the clouded glass. There’s a high-pitched tone singing in his ears, growing louder and louder as he stands there like a statue. His mouth is dry. He’s clutching at his forearms, where the sleeves of his shirt hide the marks, and even though he knows it’s impossible, he’s sure he smells cigarette smoke. He wants to run away, needs to get away, hide. But in the room a hand goes up and back in a clear threat, and Jongin cannot, will not run away, because he knows how it feels. He knows only too well.

He puts his hand on the sliding door handle and drags it open. It rattles in its runners and crashes into the wall, harder than he’d expected. At the noise the people in the room look over. The woman with her hand raised is a senior staff member, Jongin thinks. The young man wears a red lanyard around his neck, identifying him as an intern. His eyes flick to Jongin, wide and glassy in a flushed face, then lower to the floor again, shoulders hunched. It’s a posture Jongin knows with intimacy, and all the feelings that go with it, and seeing it makes his chest feel tight, so tight it’s hard to breathe.

The woman lowers her hand and glares at Jongin.

“What’s going on?” Jongin’s voice comes out like a rasp.

“Nothing for you to concern yourself with,” the woman snaps. “Mind your own business.”

Jongin swallows, or tries to. His throat is so dry it hurts. He can’t think straight. He doesn’t know what to do at all.

“That means get out,” the woman says when he doesn’t move or speak. She takes a step towards him and Jongin flinches so badly he cracks his elbow against the doorframe, even though she’s still half a room away. The intern’s head flies up again at the sound and his eyes meet Jongin’s. He shakes his head behind the woman’s back, just a little. Is he telling Jongin to go? Perhaps. But Jongin can’t do that.

“No,” he croaks. “I saw you h-hit him. I don’t know what he did, b-but -” he stops to gasp for breath. The panic is so thick it’s cutting off his air. “But hitting is not okay. Ever.”

The woman leaves the intern and walks towards him. The closer she gets, the more everything around Jongin whites out, until he can barely see anything but her face.

“Who do you think you are?” Her voice seethes with barely suppressed rage, and Jongin is taller than her and stronger, and he shouldn’t be so intimidated but it doesn’t matter, it never mattered, it’s just the same as it always was, and Jongin is weak, and fear chokes him. “How dare you disrespect me? I am his chief and I will discipline my staff as I see fit.”

Jongin is backing up, out of the room and across the corridor. She follows him, a step forward to every one he takes back. In the over-brightness of his panic, he sees the intern scuttle out of the meeting room and disappear around the corner, but his chief has her attention on Jongin now, here in the empty corridor, and the wall is at his back and he has nowhere to go. He needs to inhale, but he hasn’t managed to exhale yet. His eyes go to her name tag and it takes him three attempts to read the words: Heo Youngae, Obstetrics and Gynaecology.

“Kim Jongin,” Dr. Heo is reading his I.D. tag as he reads hers. “Orthopaedics. I should have known. Your department’s full of idiots, no wonder you’re too stupid to know your place. Kids these days don’t know a thing about respect. If your own chief won’t teach you, I guess I’ll have to.” She pushes his shoulder, making him rock into the wall. “On your knees.”

Jongin gets to his knees among the papers he dropped before. He doesn’t care that it’s supposed to be humiliating. He’s so dizzy he’s actually grateful to not have to stand. He knows how this goes. The knowledge is in sharp fingers digging into his shoulders, in an arm pushing against his throat, in the panic of not being allowed to breathe. It’s in the scars on his forearms, in the smell of cigarettes, in the way he chokes back a cry of pain. It’s a hardcover book slammed into his head over and over until his ears are ringing and he can’t see straight.

“Apologize.”

“I’m sorry,” he says.

“Again.”

“I respectfully apologize,” he says in formal language, praying she’ll leave him alone before he throws up on her shoes.

“You don’t question your seniors, you ing moron.” With this she cuffs him right over his ear, not hard, but he’s so unsteady the blow nearly knocks him right over. He puts a hand on the floor to stop himself falling. “Understand?”

“Yes.”

“Say it back.”

“I don’t question my seniors.”

“Next time, mind your own business,” she says. “Now pick up all this crap and go do something useful, if that’s even possible.”

Jongin starts to fumble at the papers all around him. His hands are shaking visibly. He daren’t look up. He’s not in his workplace anymore, where he’s an admittedly young but already respected surgeon, praised by his superiors, liked by his colleagues and looked up to by his juniors. He’s twenty-three years old and in the flat they’d shared, and Minah is making him crawl on the kitchen floor to pick up the shards of the plate she’s just broken over his head. There’s blood sliding down his forehead, hot as it gathers in his eyebrow and falls in bright red drops to the floor, and his hands are shaking so much he’s cutting himself on the ceramic shards he’s picking up.

“God, you’re so useless, I don’t know why I bother,” a female voice says above him, and he isn’t sure whether it’s Minah or Dr. Heo he’s hearing.

He’s gathered up all the plate shards - no, the papers. He’s in the hospital corridor and hearing the click of her shoes go distant as she walks away. He has a stack of papers in his shaking hands and everything is way too bright. Nausea crawls up his throat as he stands up and steadies himself with a hand against the wall. He knows he’s close to panicking, close to full-on freaking out. He needs to talk to Taeyeon, or lock himself in a bathroom stall until his head stops spinning. But he can’t. He’s at work and he’s late for ward rounds.

He walks unsteadily towards the elevator. If he keeps moving and keeps breathing and doesn’t let himself think too much, he’ll be okay. He knows he’s not thinking clearly, but he just has to fake it long enough until the panic dials down to a lower level so he can force it into the background and coexist with it, so he won’t fall apart in front of everyone.

The familiarity of the orthopaedics ward takes a little of the buzzing brightness from his vision, but he has to fight a wave of nausea as he greets the residents and interns who are waiting for him to take the second ward round. The round seems to take an eternity. He’s aware he’s getting sidelong glances from the residents. He tries to school his expression, but perhaps they can read something in the way he can’t help flinching when anyone steps a little too close, in the way he has to keep swallowing. When ward rounds are finally over, he drops his clipboard on the nursing station without speaking. His ears feel blocked and thick, and the ringing in them is so loud he can barely hear, the ward so bright he can barely see. He knows too well what this heralds. He rushes to the nearest bathroom, pushes open the door of the nearest stall and doesn't even have time to lock it behind him before he's throwing up into the toilet.

“Christ, Jongin. Were you feeling sick all morning?” The fourth-year resident, Park Hyunshik, has followed him. Jongin stills, curling his hands around the edge of the toilet bowl.

“Go away,” he croaks. "I'm fine."

“Liar.” Hyunshik leans against the doorframe. “What is it? Stomach bug? Food poisoning?”

“Can you please just leave me alone?”

“Okay, if you’re sure.” Hyunshik hesitates. “Don’t get up too quick, yeah?”

“I know,” Jongin says. “Now go away.”

Hyunshik sighs but leaves, and Jongin’s alone in the bathroom, sweating, whole body shaking as Minah’s face comes to mind, and it makes him have to throw up again.

When there’s nothing left to bring up he sits on the floor and leans back against the stall wall. His heart is hammering and there’s too much air in his chest. He’s so desperate for air but his lungs won’t push out to let him get more in, and it’s like suffocating, like drowning on dry land. The world is greying out around the edges. He needs to breathe.

Maybe, Jongin thinks, helplessly, as he wraps his arms around his ribs in shallow imitation of one of Taeyeon’s hugs, he’s been doing nothing but choking back emotions for the past six years, trembling to pieces on the inside while life around him continues to march steadily forward. He’s had a lifetime of practice at hiding things away where even he can’t find them, but now it’s all come lashing back like a rubber band snapping into his face, unleashing an ocean to drown him. And here he is again, just like he was six years ago, shaking and crying and unable to breathe, as if all those six years of healing were for nothing.

Six years ago there was a warm hand on the nape of his neck and a shoulder to lean his head on. There was a voice counting calmly into his ear, not minding that he couldn’t manage to match the numbers with his breaths at first. Though his dizziness and his shaking Jongin remembers, and he starts to count in his head. He knows how to get through this. Lee Taeyeon taught him how, in a bathroom just like this one, in a different hospital on the other side of the city.

It takes ten minutes of sitting and counting before panic’s grip on his ribs eases enough to let him exhale fully, and another ten of just breathing before he can get to his feet. He flushes the toilet and goes out to wash his hands. He scoops water into his mouth and spits into the sink. He glances in the mirror and regrets it. His face is the bluish-white of skimmed milk. But he’ll be okay. He has to be. He has a lot of patients to see today.

By the time his shift is finally over he’s twitchy and exhausted, and there’s a buzzing noise at the back of his head that just won’t go away. He sits in his car and his hands grip the steering wheel. He doesn’t know where to go. He should go home, but his apartment doesn’t feel like home anymore, because it’s not where Sohee is.

He leans his head on the steering wheel and shuts his eyes. He desperately wants to go to Sohee, but she’s never seen him like this. She doesn’t know, and it’s Jongin’s fault she doesn’t. He promised Taeyeon months ago that he would tell her, but he’s been a pathetic coward, as usual, putting it off, putting it out of his mind. What he has with Sohee feels like a beautiful, fragile bubble, and if he’s not careful he will burst it. He wants Sohee to keep seeing him how she does now. He doesn’t want her to know what he's really like, how pathetic, how useless, how easily broken he is. People hate him when they know.

But doesn’t really think she’ll hate him. At first he worried, of course he did, but he knows her better now.

“I trust her,” he says aloud, and hears how his voice is trembling. “I trust her. I do.”

He’d trusted Minah, too.

“She’s not like Minah.” It’s lucky he’s locked in his car, the way he’s talking to himself. “Most people aren’t. It was just bad luck, like Sehun said. “ing rotten luck.”” His best friend's words come out with a half-gasped laugh, the curse tasting strange on his tongue, because he never swears.

He could talk to Taeyeon, of course. She’s always there for him. But she’s not the person he wants right now. The one his heart longs for is Sohee.

“I don’t have to tell her today,” he says to himself. “I could just go and be with her. She never pushes. She never asks. She’ll understand. Well, maybe not understand exactly, how could she when I haven’t told her, but she’ll let me be.”

He drives to Sohee’s house with the windows rolled right down, and the wind blasts icy through the car, making his hair go wild and his eyes tear up, stinging his ears and numbing his fingers, but he doesn’t wind them up, because he keeps thinking he smells cigarette smoke, keeps tasting it in the back of his throat. When he gets to Sohee’s house it’s after six, and her car is parked in the driveway. He didn’t message her he was coming, didn’t even think of it. She’s told him he’s welcome to come any time, to treat her place as his own, no matter when or even if she’s home or not, but perhaps he should have messaged her this time, because he’s not exactly in a normal space. He wants to be normal, though, and that means coming to Sohee’s the way he always does.

He goes upstairs and opens her door with the key she gave him. The Japanese chime hanging above the door sings musically, and the house has the familiar clean smell of her laundry powder. It replaces the cigarettes, and he closes his eyes and breathes it in.

“Jongin, is that you?” Sohee has heard the chime. There’s a smile in her voice as her footsteps come closer. Jongin opens his eyes and tries to find the way to his smile. She comes out of the kitchen, the sleeves of a gigantic hoodie that would be big even on Jongin shoved up to her elbows, hair in a wispy knot right on top of her head. Her face has lit up in the special way it does when she looks at him. Jongin’s chest, which has felt so impossibly tight all day that he can barely take half of a full breath, finally loosens, and with it something inside him cracks, and so does his face.

“Hey, hey...” Sohee’s voice is gentle as her arms slide around his waist. She reaches up to his face, and when her thumb brushes his cheek, Jongin realises he’s crying.

“I’m sorry,” he says. He tries to wipe his face but more tears just keep coming out. “I don’t know why…”

“Shh, it’s okay. Come on, come inside.” She leads him into the lounge and they sit down on the couch, where she lets Jongin pull her close. He buries his face in her shoulder, and she combs a soothing hand through his hair.

“Sorry,” he says, “I shouldn’t have...I didn’t mean…” his sentences keep getting swallowed by tears.

“Did something happen at work?”

He shakes his head, then nods. “Yeah,” he says, “something happened, but I thought I was okay now. I didn’t mean to cry all over you.”

“Jongin, it’s okay,” Sohee says. She’s tucked warm and close into his side, her face turned up to his. “You can cry in front of me, as well as smile.” She nestles in a little closer. “All those things about yourself that you want to hide from me - the things you think are bad, or silly, or scary, or painful - they’re all just part of what makes you Jongin, and every part of you is perfect to me.”

Jongin has remembered how to smile again. It trembles at the corners of his lips. He closes his eyes and feels the warmth and weight of her, the perfect way she fits against him, her softness to his edges, and the anxiety that was threatening to drown him all day slowly starts to fade. Here, there’s only quietness, and safety, and Sohee in his arms.

“Do you remember a couple of months ago, when I said I had something to tell you sometime, but I wasn’t ready to say it yet?”

“Yes,” she says. “I remember.”

“I’ve been putting off telling you for ages, because you coming into my life was like a dream, and I didn’t want to ruin it.”

“You won’t ruin it,” S