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25

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“It’s about time you showed up! We’ve been waiting here, needing to practice, but it’s kind of hard to do that when you’re not even here! And I have got to tell you—”

“Is there a problem with your sight, Baek Hyun? Even a blind man could see the look on Su Ho’s face, and with your knowledge of the current situation, you shouldn’t be so ignorant and annoying,” Chan Yeol scolded after he nudged the younger male in the side quite violently with his elbow.

“There are some complications with Yi Hyun that I’d rather not talk about. I have to go, tell the manager I had an emergency,” Su Ho replied, gathered his things and flung his bag over his shoulder. He was gone in the blink of an eye and most of the eyes in the room shifted over to Kris, who hadn’t even seen Yi Hyun in the past four or five days.

“What?” he asked as Su Ho exited the room.

“She’s your girlfriend; don’t you know what’s going on?” Lay asked. Xiu Min and Tao crossed their arms over their chests and looked at Kris in question, their eyebrows rising in sync.

Chen rolled his eyes. He was now cradling Kris, catching him from falling after being abruptly hip-checked by Lu Han, who just stood there with his usual innocent look, but a devious grin across his face. “Yeah, leader Wu. You usually don’t even let the poor girl breathe,” Lu Han joked, but none of the members laughed. He didn’t mean it in a negative way, he was just trying to lighten up the mood, but that proved to be more than difficult.

Kris helped himself out of Chen’s supportive arms and glared at Lu Han. “Why don’t you ask Su Ho why I haven’t been able to see her? He’s basically forbidden me from going anywhere near her until she’s healed,” he said in a defeated tone.

“Well what’s with that? Since when is he your boss?”

“Since he saved her life,” Kris muttered under his breath. He knew the whole story between them. He didn’t want to believe it was true, but no matter how close Kris and Yi Hyun were, Su Ho was always the more important of the two. If it weren’t for him, Kris would never have met Yi Hyun, and she would be less than alive.

“Oh, yeah, I’ve heard part of this story. I guess that is pretty important,” Lay claimed.

“Are you the new gossip queen or what?” Lu Han asked, “It’s kind of my job.”

“I thought it was my job,” Tao commented, earning a glare from Lu Han.

“Actually, it’s my job to make Kris’ life difficult, which involves being a gossip queen. I’m supposed to know everything,” Lu Han said matter-of-factly. Tao rolled his eyes and looked at Chen who just laughed.

“So you’re saying you’re like a regular married couple?” Lay asked, his chin in contemplation before wincing in pain, the little prince punching him right in the arm.  “Yeah, I’d say that’s pretty accurate,” he said, rubbing his upper arm that was now forming a lump from Lu Han’s knuckle.

“Anyway! Since apparently Lay knows all the information, our chatting has been rendered utterly useless! So thanks for that, buddy boy!” he exclaimed, elbowing Lay in the ribs.

“I’m sure he would appreciate it if you stopped abusing him,” Xiu Min commented, stepping between the two younger boys.  Lu Han gave an innocent smile to Xiu Min, who seemed to be completely unaffected.

Kris was gone, and it took everyone a while to notice. Luhan was right, Suho wasn’t his boss ad he was going to see her whether Suho approved or not. With bag in hand, Kris jumped into his car and headed down to the hospital. He approached the receptionist, his words already in mind and he spoke them mechanically and carefully listened to the answer before making his way through the maze of the hospital to Yi Hyun’s room. He knocked on the door before entering and one good look at her broke him down, “Yi Hyun?” he whimpered, tears already in his eyes.

Yi Hyun looked aged; tired. He body was weak and thin and she could barely open her eyes to look at him. He didn’t know what to say and covered his mouth with his hand—gapping and searching for words that he didn’t have.

“Yi Fan,” she replied weakly, doing her best to ask him to approach her. He did; his legs barely able to carry him as he collapsed to the floor next to her bed, his hands holding hers and he pressed his forehead against it. Kris wanted to cry, he couldn’t stand to see her in this state. “Kiss me,” she demanded. Kris shot up and softly took her cheeks in his hands. He looked her in the eyes, they were sunken and worn, she was very sick and he could see that.

“You’re beautiful,” he commented and leaned down to kiss her. His soft lips felt incredible against hers and she tried to sigh in such contentment but couldn’t muster anything. “I love you,” he whispered after pulling away. His hands continued to cup her cheeks.

“I love you,” she rasped, looking up at him with a small smile before it was hidden by another soft kiss from Kris. He littered her face with kisses, but always returned to the source and planted another sweet kiss against her dry and cracked lips. He didn’t care; the passion was still the same. He could feel every loving fiber she had being put into their kisses. Right now, that was all he could ask for.

But even as he pulled away, he couldn’t bring himself to ask the one question he wanted to ask. He gritted his teeth behind closed and pursed lips. “Are you going to be okay?” he asked.

She sighed and closed her eyes to look away from him, defeated. She hated that question more than anything because the answer frustrated her beyond belief. “I need surgery. The only problem is that if I don’t get the surgery, I’ll probably die of infection. If I do get the surgery, there’s a change my arm may never be mobile again,” she explained.

“Get the surgery,” he said selfishly.

“Wu Yi Fan,” she muttered angrily and turned to look at him again. “It’s not that easy.”

“Do you want to live or do you want to die?” he asked. He had a point, but that didn’t make her any less angry. Her teeth grounded together as she looked at him. It was a hard enough decision; he didn’t need his own selfish needs to take that over.  “Because I sure as hell don’t want you to die, and you shouldn’t want to die either. If it were me, having one immobile arm would be better than death.” This didn’t really make her feel any better either. “Besides, it’s just like you said, there’s a chance. Well doesn’t that mean that there’s still a chance for it to be mobile, even if just partially?”

She stared at him; she stared at him so hard he had to look away from her intimidating gaze. “I know you care about me, Yi Fan. I know you want me to live, I want to live too, but can I really take any more struggles in my life?” she asked.

“How about the struggle of everyone else at the thought of losing you to something that could have been prevented with a completely safe and effective surgery? So the bullet is in a really inconvenient place, but do you really want to make the world suffer with the decision of putting yourself down in what I would imagine to be a very painful and morbid way? You plan on letting yourself rot to death with infection. It’s not like they can exactly go in there and clean it, it’s bad for your body.” Kris’ explanation was enough. She couldn’t take any more of his words. His argument was strong and completely valid, but in the back of her mind she still didn’t really know what to do.

“I love you too much to lose you,” he finally said as his eyes met hers. She looked deep into them and she could tell he just wanted to cry, but he wasn’t going to. He was going to be her strong rock, her shoulder to lean on and he wouldn’t cry in front of her—no matter how devastated his was by the whole thing. She reached out with a weak hand, I.V. stuck in the top of her wrist as she softly cupped his cheek and that was the end. A single tear fell from Kris’ eye and landed on her hand as he tilted his head down, wanting to avoid her gaze as best he could.

There was a knock at the door and Yi Hyun looked over just in time to spot Suho.  She didn’t have the strength to shoo him away and he entered whether he felt invited or not. “I thought I might find you here,” Suho commented, talking about Kris. Kris didn’t have the heart to respond to Suho right now, he had just gotten extremely emotional about the choices Yi Hyun was faced with and he wasn’t about to sit there and let her choose a decision to punish everyone.

Yi Hyun sighed with a ragged breath, “What do you want, Suho?” she asked, a little irritated that he came to basically rain on Kris’ parade, finally able to see her.

“I just came to check on you,” he replied defensively.

“That’s a load of crap, you came here to tell me to leave,” Kris interjected. Kris wasn’t born yesterday; he knew every intention of Suho at this time, while Yi Hyun was recovering and everything. Suho didn’t think that Kris had the ability to stay around Yi Hyun without hurting her.

“I’m sick and tired of you guys fighting. Suho, Kris is my boyfriend, if you don’t like it that’s too damn bad, but you have no authority telling him to leave—” her speech was interrupted by a fit of violent coughing causing Kris to alert a nurse.  Many nurses came rushing in and sat Yi Hyun up before putting and oxygen mask over her face.

“I told her to go through with the surgery,” Kris told Suho, watching his girl suffer in front of him. “The more we waste time, the worse it’s going to get. Any doctor not off their rocker should have taken the bullet out the second she came in,” Kris said before he looked to Suho, “unless someone otherwise stated that they weren’t sure that’s what needed to happen, someone with authority over her present state. I swear, Suho. If she ends up dying because of you, I will never ever forgive you.”

“I would never forgive myself,” Suho retorted icily.