It’s the day of her surgery. 

Jiwoo wasn’t getting any better, and it was the only option left, to everyone’s dismay.

Along with a few nurses, they’re all walking her to the operating room. The sick woman held her mother’s hand on her left and Sooyoung’s hand on her right as they passed through the hallways. 

“Dad, you cry too much!” Jiwoo jokes, earning a light slap from her mom and a giggle from her father. 

“When will you ever be serious?” Her mom leans down to hug her tightly, running her hands through Jiwoo’s hair. 

“I’ll be okay.” 

They arrive at the entrance, and everyone takes their time to talk to Jiwoo.

Jongho barely cried, but he now looked like an absolute mess talking to his older sister. 

“You’re strong! You’re gonna get through this!” He sobs, Jiwoo giggling at her younger sibling.

“It sounds like you’re trying to convince yourself instead of me. C’mere my little rascal~” She opens her arms to embrace him, ruffling his hair. 

Sooyoung swears she heard him mumble something, somewhere in the context of asking Jiwoo to stop calling him that. 

“Sooyoung…” Jiwoo finally turns to her, raising her hands and Sooyoung, by instinct, rests her face on Jiwoo’s palms gently her cheeks, melting into her touch. 

“I’ll be waiting here.” She says, and Jiwoo immediately wipes the tear dropping from her left eye.

“I love you.” Jiwoo whispers, and Sooyoung leans down to peck her forehead.

“I love you too.”

And just like that, the four are left waiting after the doors to the room close, uncertain of the future they would face after this surgery.

It’s midnight, Sooyoung and Jongho are walking to the convenience store in the other building to buy snacks for everyone as they wait for the surgery to finish. She notices his unusual behavior, the 19 year-old is too silent. 

“What’s gotten you thinking so much?” She ruffles his hair, and he only sighs deeply.

“Doubts.” 

Sooyoung didn’t urge him to talk more, understanding him.

“She’s strong, Jongho. She’ll live.” Sooyoung says before opening the glass door to the convenience store. The tiny bell attached to it made a noise, alerting the cashier that they had customers.

—————————————————————

The surgeon arrives in the waiting area, Jiwoo’s mother rises from her seat. Sooyoung had just arrived from the bathroom and saw them through the windows. Seeing a trash can across the hallway, she quickly aims, throws, and shoots the empty bag of chips that she’s been fiddling around with to ease her anxiety. It goes straight into the trash can, to her surprise.

When she enters the waiting room, she immediately gets greeted with a hug from Jiwoo’s mother who was sobbing. 

“Jiwoo’s alright, she’s breathing.” The father announces, but Sooyoung’s still confused by their worried expressions.

“Jiwoo had severe excess bleeding during surgery, and we had to stop before it got much worse. Although we already managed to drain most of the fluid in her lungs. If they come back quicker than we expect it to, it can highly develop into chronic pulmonary edema. She’ll eventually need to have another surgery in a few days, but the chances of her surviving that one is extremely lower.” 

Sooyoung feels her world freeze, her sense of hearing going static. The hand rubbing the mother’s hand stops. But before she could even reach the state of complete numbness and hopelessness, Jiwoo’s mom aggressively shakes her back to her senses, grasping Sooyoung’s cheeks. 

“Do not let this get to you. I know Jiwoo can endure it, she’s my daughter! I know her the best! She’s not going to die…”

“Ms. Kim, don’t promise yourself. It’ll only hurt more.” She holds the hands touching her face, slowly lowering them to calm Jiwoo’s mother down. 

No matter how much she hated it, she still had to let them remember the reality.

“We need to trust the doctors. We need to let Jiwoo decide.” The father butts in, turning his wife around to let her cry on his shoulder. 

Sooyoung gets distracted from the couple by Jongho quietly sitting on one of the chairs, rubbing his hands across his face in despair.

‘Jiwoo, please don’t quit yet.’ She thinks as the sight of her entire family in distress shatters her own heart.

Eight hours pass quickly, and Jiwoo’s finally awake.

Sooyoung watches her from across the area as she gets checked by one of the nurses fixing her oxygen tank. 

The life in her eyes was no longer visible. It seems as if her usual bubbly energy was extracted along with the fluid in her lungs. Jiwoo would usually force herself to speak despite the pain it brought to her chest. Now, she wasn’t even trying. 

The nurse leaves, then a certain movement distracts Sooyoung. It was Jiwoo’s arm reaching for her. 

She quickly stands up, even tripping over her bag just to hold her hand.

“Feeling something off?” She carefully lays Jiwoo’s arm back down on her bed.

Jiwoo only shakes her head, tugging Sooyoung’s sleeve. 

It was a habit for her to tug Sooyoung’s clothes whenever she wanted to cuddle. 

But as much as Sooyoung wanted to hold her, it was surely going to make Jiwoo uncomfortable, taking note of how she just got off from surgery. Sooyoung settles on lightly embracing her waist with her right arm, sitting on a chair right next to her bed.

“I’ll be okay.”

What made her say that? Sooyoung is unsure. Though she knows that a part of Jiwoo said that to ease her worries. She doesn’t answer back, only rubbing Jiwoo’s knuckles as her reply.

“I need this surgery, I want to do it.” Her sick girlfriend talks more, like she’s spurring Sooyoung to answer her back, but she doesn’t, which weirdly seems to frustrate Jiwoo.

“Are you not gonna answer me…” The tone in her is weak yet the irritation was obvious.

“Jiwoo, what am I supposed to say?” Sooyoung hopelessly speaks back, but it was gentler than Jiwoo’s tone, so clueless of what the other woman is trying to get her to do.

This time, it’s Jiwoo who doesn’t answer, and that itself gives Sooyoung an idea of what her girlfriend was trying to point out.

“You don’t want to do it. You want me to stop you. Is that it?” She glances, staring into Jiwoo’s eyes.

What she sees is fear, eyes filled with complete uncertainty.

Jiwoo wanted someone to stop her from thinking like this. She’s making herself seem like she’d been itching to do the surgery when she wasn’t.

“It’s your choice. You don’t have to do it if you don’t want to. Y’know?” Sooyoung says, and she sees the fear in Jiwoo’s eyes transform into something much more negative. 

The longer she stares, the more she realizes that those eyes weren’t covered with angriness but sheer betrayal. 

It sends a shiver down her spine. 

“In the end, the decision is yours to make.” She attacks Jiwoo’s burning eyes with her own. Sooyoung’s eyes were the oceans, bombarding her fury with her gaze of tenderness, exhibiting pure comfort and affection to let her calm down. 

And it works. The flame in Jiwoo’s eyes died by the waves that surrounded her, the ocean swaddling and trapping the fire that burned her, which seemed to have been a little too extravagant. The waves forcefully putting a stop to her barrage of anger goes past her eyes, some of its waters overflowing, her orbs so filled with Sooyoung’s counterattack of gentleness and comfort that it slides down her cheek, travels down her jaw, and lands on her pillow.

Jiwoo didn’t even say anything, yet Sooyoung managed to read right through her.

She uses her thumb to gently wipe her face, removing the trail that stained her cheek, and she puts her guard down, knowing that she successfully put out the fire that Jiwoo started in herself.

“I-I’ll be okay.” Jiwoo stutters.

One thing Sooyoung’s oceans couldn’t eliminate was Jiwoo’s persistence, and this time, she chooses not to deal with it anymore. Not today.

“Go to sleep, love. Get some rest.” 

She walks away from Jiwoo’s bed, turning the lights off, and settling on the couch to sleep. She doesn’t see it, but she hears everything. All of her quiet sobs. She ignores them.

Because the only way to break Jiwoo’s persistence is to let her realize the effects it had on herself. 

Sooyoung disliked being so cold, but this was her only option. Jiwoo needed to know that she also had to put her own feelings first rather than always caring for others. She hated how Jiwoo was only doing this surgery for her and her parents. 

She was the one who saw how tired she became throughout her whole stay in the hospital. She was the one who witnessed her feelings of hopelessness every time the doctor talked to her. She was always there, Sooyoung saw every single moment. 

She knew Jiwoo wanted to rest.

But she didn’t know what kind of rest.

The thought itself makes Sooyoung uncomfortably shift on the couch she’s lying on right now, pulling the blanket over her head to take those same thoughts away. It takes her a full hour to realize that she was already crying as well, feeling the pillow on her cheek soaked in tears.

‘Damn it.’ she mutters to herself, scrambling out of the covers and quietly making her way back to Jiwoo’s hospital bed. Her eyes were already shut, but the continuous stream of tears falling down her face gave an easy sign that she was still wide awake.

She stands there with her fists enclosed, not knowing what to do, her eyes fixed on the machine monitoring Jiwoo’s lungs. The sick woman quietly sniffs and whimpers, and Sooyoung finally loses it. More than enough to throw her logical thinking out of the door.

She holds Jiwoo’s hand, startling the crying girl, making her open her eyes. Sooyoung delicately wipes her tears away, and the expression on Jiwoo’s face makes her knees go weak. 

“What do you really want, Jiwoo?” Her voice breaks, and Sooyoung doesn’t care anymore, letting her tears flow down.

“Sooyoung…” Jiwoo squeezes her hold on the latter’s hand, doing her best to comfort her.

“I can’t stand seeing you lie in front of everyone,” she swallows before continuing, “It hurts to see you put yourself aside every single time…”