He let out a silent cry as the older boy tried to force it down his throat, but it was useless. Would this kill him? He certainly felt as if he was going to die when the sticky fluid filled his mouth and he desperately tried to twist his head, when Minsoo made him swallow.

“Please don’t struggle”, Minsoo sighed, patting the slender boy’s forehead with a  wet towel. “You know you have to do this”.

“But I don’t want to!”, he coughed, still trying to spit out what was left of the white, creamy fluid. “It’s disgusting!”

“That may be true, but if you don’t take it you’ll die. Idiot”, he added cheerfully when Daniel pouted and looked away. “Why do we have to do this every day?”

“It’s not fair hyung… If you had to eat that awful medicine every single day you wouldn’t just act like it was nothing. It feels like… I don’t know, eating half-liquid sand mixed up with tequila and seaweed!”

“Don’t tell you know how that taste…”
“If I knew I’m sure it would be exactly the same as this!” He looked so lost and helpless as he sat there, fighting the urge to puke the medicine right back up again, Minsoo couldn’t help but feel sorry for him.

“I’m sorry… I guess I don’t understand”.

“It’s okay, I couldn’t ask you to. But thank you for making me take the medicine hyung, I don’t think I would be able to drink that stuff without you”. He smiled and got on his feet, “I think I need some chocolate to get rid of this taste… You owe me by the way, remember?”

“Sure, you just… go ahead without me, I have to call one of my old classmates. They arranged for a re-union party on a Saturday, I mean, come on… a Saturday”. He smiled with an indulgent look on his face. “They probably forgot that both me and Chanhee are supposed to be on Music Core that day… We’ve been promoting like forever, how could they miss it?”

“Okay, I see you in a minute then. But I expect at least three Snickers!”

“No way, you’ll have way too much sugar! One!”

“Three!”
“One!”
“Two then, and I’ll share it with you. Is it okay then?”

He sighed, tried not to laugh at how cute Daniel was acting. “Okay then, I give up”. He smiled.

“Yay! Thank you hyung!” He left the room, almost dancing when he thought of eating chocolate.

Minsoo hoped that his dongsaeng would go unnoticed to the vending machine. Truthfully, they weren’t supposed to eat sweats all the time, but he had a hard time turning down Daniel’s puppy eyes.

He leaned back in the chair, staring absentmindedly at the ceiling, while he tried to forget how much it hurt to see Daniel fight against him every day as he helped him take his medicine. Why couldn’t it just go away? Whatever that was… The fear of not knowing exactly what was wrong with Daniel felt as if someone was breathing on his neck every other second, reminding him of how unstable his condition might be.

He loathed the feeling of not knowing anything, detested the thought that he couldn’t help him at all.

Closing his eyes in order to catch the tears before they even dared to reach his make-up, he stood up and with a deep breath he left the room, to buy Daniel the promised chocolate.

“Wow, nice work today guys!”, he said as happy as he could, looking at the others.

Jonghyun threw himself in a chair, drying the sweat from his forehead. “Damn, I’m so exhausted! When this is over I don’t EVER wanna promote anything again, except beds. Why did we go with all that jumping again?”

“Honestly, I think some erted coordinator wanted to see how your junk looked from beneath Jonghyunah”. Chanhee slapped his shoulder teasingly and started to laugh, while Jonghyun looked down, blushing.

“It’s not funny hyung”, he muttered shyly.

“Hey Daniel, what is that?” Byunghun’s words made them all look at Daniel, whose lips where covered in half melted chocolate.

“Nothing…”, he tried, but Chanhee cut him off.

“You can’t eat that stuff, not while we’re still promoting! What if you gain weight? Or what if it affects your skin?” He looked terrified by the mere thought.

“Just let him finish it”. Minsoo smiled. “But I want a bite too!”

“Me too! I haven’t eaten chocolate since before we debuted!”, Jonghyun said and grabbed the chocolate bar out of Daniel’s hand.

He was with joy when the sweet candy reached his tongue.

“How could I ever have forgotten this heavenly taste?!” He closed his eyes to enjoy the chocolate from the bottom of his heart.

“Hold your breath Danielah, but I doubt you’ll get that back”, Minsoo laughed, when Changhyun snatched the candy from Jonghyun to have his share, fighting against Jonghyun who desperately wanted it back.

“But that was my favourite…” His eyes turned sad, but Minsoo kept smiling and found something in the pocket of his jacket.

Daniel looked at the shiny red wrap on the chocolate bar.

“Hyung…”
“Hurry up and eat it before someone sees it. I don’t think Jonghyun will let this one go as easily”, he whispered, giving Daniel a quick hug. “By the way, you have something on your face…” With a tender movement he lead his index to Daniel’s face to wipe the chocolate of his lips. “There you go”.

“Thank you hyung”. Daniel smiled at Minsoo and hurried out of the room to eat his chocolate without being disturbed.

He shook his head, grateful of that happy look on Daniel’s face. Then he turned to the others again to join the chase for the candy bar in Jonghyun’s hand.

The darkness was only broken by the light from the small lamp on his desk. He looked up in surprise when he heard someone whisper his name. A second later Daniel collapsed on the doorstep, all white and sleek from sweat.

“Daniel!” Minsoo fell on his knees beside Daniel and tenderly he lifted his body towards himself, placing his hand on his forehead. The younger boy was all soaked and burned beneath his touch. “Daniel!”

His eyes roved behind his eyelids, but he didn’t open them.

“Hyung…” His voice was nothing but a whisper.

“Did you forget to take your medicine? Did you?” He looked panicky at Daniel’s closed eyes.

“Yes”, he whispered, clearly using all his strength to speak. “I didn’t want to… to be alone… But you weren’t there…”

“I know, I’m sorry, I’m so, so sorry…”

“H-Hyung…” His words died out and he stopped moving.

“Daniel! Oh God, Daniel, please! Danielah…” Not caring about the tears in his eyes anymore he rose his head. “Help me!”, he cried as loud as he could. “Somebody help me!”

As the doctor approached they all got on their feet, anxiously looking at his serious face.

“Is he going to be all right?”, whimpered Chanhee, his eyes full of tears.

The doctor nodded.

“Yes. But he’ll have to rest right now, so you can’t see him until tomorrow”.

They all drew a sigh of relief.

“Thank goodness…”, Byunghun mumbled and took a deep breath as he let himself fall back into the chair in the waiting room.

“Have you any idea of why he collapsed?”, Changhyun asked, looking more than just ordinarily concerned.

“Too much work and lack of sleep seem to have caused it”.

Minsoo was quite sure he was the only one able to see through the lie, but he didn’t say anything. As long as Daniel insisted on keeping this disease a secret to the others he couldn’t do anything but respect that wish.

As the others started to chat randomly in order to avoid falling asleep, Minsoo went after the doctor and stopped him in one of the other hallways.

“Tell me the truth”, he spoke in a low voice. “I know about his condition, how is he?”

The doctor looked quite surprised at first, clearly one of their bosses had ordered him not to inform the group about anything, but then his face went very solemn.

“To tell you the truth, we don’t know.”

“You don’t know? But why…”
“It seems like he isn’t responding to the medicine as he should. I wasn’t lying when I said that too much work had caused this, he has obviously been suppressing the symptoms for a while now. Your boss told me something similar. It seems as if he hasn’t been slacking off at all during the time he practices with you guys, but just kept acting as if nothing was wrong. I guess his body couldn’t take it any longer and he finally fainted.”

“Not responding to the medicine?... How can that be, he have been taking that stuff since forever!”

“That’s exactly the issue. He might have become resistant.”
“But what are you gonna do then?” He forgot about lowering his voice as the panic started to get hold of him, but it didn’t matter. The only important thing right now was if Daniel would get better or not.

“Well, his case is very rare, but…”
“But?”

“But we will probably be able to make another medication for him than the one he is taking right now. It has been done before and we already know of several other possibilities. The shift might be painful though. Right now we can’t say whether his body will respond positively to the new medicine or not, we’ll have to wait at least one month to be sure.”

“And what if that one doesn’t work either?”

He looked frightened at the doctor, who seemed to think with the speed of light to come up with a good answer.

“Nothing is certain yet”.