When I Was Your Man - Bruno Mars

Narrator's POV

Each flat line on the heart monitor was followed by a beep. With each beep, the EXO members turned away from the window one by one. What was more difficult than having to see a loved one pass away was the fact that Min Yu had deserved far more than being dressed in white and buried six feet underground.

"Defibrillator ready?" The surgeon turned to the nurse holding the equipment meant to send controlled voltages to wake up her heart. This was the defining moment of every doctor's career, the part where he or she begins to play god and bring back a patient to life. The nurse nodded to him. And as they brought the electrical shocks to her chest, everyone was holding their breaths.

Another shock caused Min Yu's entire back to arch from the electricity coursing through her. The heart monitor was still on flat waves, intend to prove that she was, indeed, gone. "Clear?" The doctor spoke through his facemask. The nurse nodded, eyeing the bare-chested patient by the bed. Min Yu's clothes were torn from the top to bottom, to make resuscitating her easier.

"Clear." And the two charged paddles were applied to her chest, sending another wave of voltage straight to her heart. Min Jae ran a hand through her disheveled hair as she fought the urge to hurl the phone somewhere else. "Jungsoo, please come here now," she cried and almost pleaded on her knees to the person on the other line.

"Yeobo, I want to go," the man also cried against his phone's receiver. "You have no idea how much I want to go there. You don't know how much we all want to go there. In fact, Siwon had a fight with the airline manager because we couldn't possibly get out of the plane. But we were promised to stop over at Singapore, then we'll take a flight back to Incheon. Wait for us."

Min Jae leaned on the window separating her from her daughter. "About that..." She in a quick breath. "I don't think Min Yu can wait for you anymore." And another round of her sobbing ensued. "Noona..." There was a hand on the small of her back. Seeing who it was made her cry even harder, causing her to embrace Chunji.

Donghae, in the meanwhile, marched to the doors, almost grabbing the nurse by his collar. "Let me in. Just please let me in," he begged in sole anguish. The EXO members ran to stop him from barging in, everyone had their own share of Donghae's limbs to keep him from entering any further. "JUST LET ME IN!" The man tasted his own tears. With a finger pointed menacingly, "THAT'S MY WIFE IN THERE!" he shouted.

Keeping his composure, "Sir, we are doing everything we can to save her," the nurse explained in sympathy. "What you are doing will not be of any help to her situation--" "THEN WHAT WILL?" Donghae cut him off furiously. "WHAT WILL KEEP HER ALIVE, HUH? Is it money? Here," he fumbled for his wallet and toss however much money was inside. "TAKE IT! TAKE IT ALL! Take everything. I'll give you everything. Keep her alive...please..."

And he fell on his knees by the scattered money bills on the floor, feeling more abandoned and wronged with each second that ticks. By now, he has realized why Min Yu had offered to divorce him in the first place, because it would have been much painful for him to see her die than if she would see him with someone else. To her, the divorce was like peeling the Band-Aid as fast as she could instead of prolonging the agony.

But he didn't regret it one tiny bit. He didn't regret staying with her. He didn't regret having to watch her spit and cough out blood every time the baby moves and kicks inside her. He didn't regret having to assist her everywhere she goes. He didn't regret seeing her being slowly incapacitated by her pregnancy. He didn't regret, so she didn't regret anything either.

And he still wanted to tell her so many things, with that being uncountable, excluding the things he had wanted to do with her. By the time the newly-born child, who was yet to be named, turned exactly one-hour-old, Donghae, too, had been exactly one-hour-old in his single parenthood. It'd be a long mourning period.

Min Yu's POV

I had read somewhere that after you die, it is believed that you have seven minutes of brain activity left. In that short span of seven minutes, you experience your entire life over in a kind of fast-forward dream. Funny, I thought. I was dead and I'm wasting my seven minutes on contemplating about the very seven minutes I was using up now.

Yixing was the one to open the door, and he only opened the door wide enough for him to peek through. "Hey~ what brought you here?" He asked in his fluent Korean. I crossed my arms over my chest, unimpressed. "Where's my sister?" I interrogated quickly, pushing the door to open wider. "You have a sister?" Lay scratched his head in confusion.

"Aish, hyung. Just let her in for heavens' sake!" Jongin exclaimed from inside, causing Lay to kick the door ajar. "IGE MWOYA?" I shouted loudly, cringing at the sight that welcomed me. "Well, we're looking for your sister, remember?" Kai gestured to the overturned tables and cushions. "I know!" I didn't dare step in. "Why would you look after my sister when you're both topless?!"

Lay snorted as he lifted his jeans higher up his hips. "Huh, you haven't seen us when we're all at home on a hot day," he grumbled. "And why aren't you used to this? Haven't you just finished with your honeymoon or something?" Yixing kept talking, but I had long blocked him out. "So...where do you think Heejin has gone off to?" Kai yawned and put his arm around my shoulder.

I flinched at his touch, seeing how he still hadn't managed to look for my sister and to look for a fresh shirt to wear. "I don't know," I shrugged his arm off and advanced to the kitchen. I had gotten dressed and brushed my teeth yet haven't drunk a single drop of water. "But she loves to crawl everywhere. And damn it, we have to find her before she gets stuck into something or drinks toilet water or whatever."

"What are we looking for again?" Yixing struggled to put on a white tank top as he walked up the stairs. "Cuter, smaller, harmless little version of her," Jongin pointed to me. The older nodded and began weaving in and out of rooms on the second floor. Kai busied himself on making the place look messy while I'm tidying up after him.

"Dress up," I ordered nonchalantly.

"No way~"

"Wear a shirt, at least," I tried bargaining.

Jongin stuck his tongue out playfully. "Make me~"

"Unnie?" Yixing mumbled from upstairs. "Ne, that's unnie. Our Heejin is very smart~" He appeared from the long hallway of the dorm, carrying the child in his arms. "Finally!" I exclaimed loudly. "I found her in your room, babo," Lay scolded as he walked down the stairs carefully. "I saw her playing and chatting with a VERY suspicious picture..." His voice trailed off and his eyebrow arched at his fellow EXO member.

I held my hands out and invited her to come to me. Heejin wriggled away from Yixing's grasp and came to me. "What does our Heejin have in here?" I cooed, trying to take the picture frame she was holding. Turning to Jongin, "Ya, if my sister has seen from your bedroom, I'll film you secretly and make it into a movie for everyone to see," I threatened.

He had his face hidden and buried against Yixing's shoulder. Finally, Heejin gave up on playing tug of war with the picture frame. "Where'd you get this?" I asked curiously, seeing my face on a frame. "It's not mine!" Kai defended. "It's Yixing's. He's just putting the blame on me!" He stomped away and up the stairs to his room.

I just scoffed. "It's his. Believe me," Lay sighed and kissed Heejin's forehead. "Unnie has no idea how much our Jonginnie fangirls over her~" he singsonged merrily as he let my sister play with his hair. "Say goodbye to Yixing ahjussi," I ordered, heading to the bottom of the stairs. "WHAT AHJUSSI?!" Lay defended, faking his anger after seeing Heejin smile.

We began our tiresome travel up the staircase, what with the added weight of Heejin, who seemed to grow bigger and bigger every time I see her. "Go tease Jongin," Lay motioned to his bedroom door after we had reached the second floor. Before I could open my mouth to say something, he had already leaned forward and kissed me on the cheek.

I watched him walk away, his figure slowly getting smaller as he went back to his room. Although a tad too late, I ducked down to remove my right shoe and hurl it towards him, hitting a small portion of his back and earning me an amused chuckle from him. "Heejin-ah," I turned to her, who was still busy toying with the picture frame. "Give unnie this, okay? Then go get my shoe."

When she crawled towards my discarded footwear, I knocked on the third door from the right, which was Kai's. "Who is it?" he shouted from inside, as if there was a bigger possibility that it was none of the people actually present. "The girl from the picture frame?" I tried, and there was the sound of feet shuffling against the carpeted floor and the door clicking open.

"Your room's so..." I started, scanning the four walls with random scribbles in varying penmanships. "Artistic?" he suggested, collapsing on his bed and patting the space beside him. "Dirty." I plopped on the mattress. But my rest didn't take long as I stood up to read each of the messages written and crowding the blank walls.

"In my apartment before, I've had this huge world map just plastered on a wall," I said as-a-matter-of-factly. "To our dear Jongin," I read out loud the one message that caught my eye the most. "Even though we encountered lots of hardships before and after we debuted, there's still more coming our way. So we have to endure well, arasseo? With love, from Joonmyun hyung."

Jongin appeared beside me, offering an uncapped marker. "Write one for me," he requested, to which I kicked my shoes -- well, just shoe actually -- and climbed up his bed. His ceiling was low enough for me to reach and write on. Kai laughed. "What?" I leaned far back and started writing in an uncomfortable posture. "So that you'll get to see this before and after you go to bed."

"To my best friend and playmate Jonginnie~" I read out as I wrote. "Why do you have a picture of me in your room?" The door was thrown open and in came my sister with my shoe in her hand. "I just want to, not like I love you or something," Kai explained, carrying Heejin in his arms. "But anyway, although I was mean to you and everyone else at first, that's just the way I am."

"I was lucky -- somehow -- that I had the honor -- or the curse, that is -- to be your best friend. Thank you for being there when he -- you know who I mean -- wasn't there. Although you had just said that you don't love me, I love you like how cats love mice--" "But they're natural enemies--" "Exactly. We have to endure well. With no respect, from Song, Park, Lee Min Yu~"

"There!" I exclaimed, putting the cap back on the marker before handing it back to him. I took my sister from his arms and bid my goodbye before walking out the front door. It wasn't a long trip back to our house and I soon found myself with my sister knocking on the front door. "We just got on with it for the first time in a long time last night and now we have a baby." Donghae greeted as he opened the door. "Well, that was fast."

Laughing, I nudged him out of the way and let Heejin explore the unfamiliar surroundings. For the first few hours in the morning, Donghae tried stooping down to the child's level while I munch on some five-minute instant breakfast, which was plain toasted bread and coffee. She crawled up the stairs, and the man took it as her initiative to rest. "I'll bring her to the bedroom," Donghae stated before following her ongoing adventure.

Finally finished eating and done washing the dishes I had used, I got intrigued by the two being quiet and so I went after them. Donghae was, as it turned out as soon as I opened the bedroom door, humming her to sleep. With half-lidded eyes, Heejin let out a yawn before sleeping peacefully with her head against Donghae's chest. "Where'd you find her, anyway?" he asked, turning to me.

I climbed up the mattress and laid down beside him. "Yixing found her in Kai's bedroom," I replied, resting my head on his shoulder and my sister's hair gently. "How old is she now?" Donghae prodded once more. "She's barely a year old. I'm not sure." I kissed her cheek and held her small hand carefully. "I wish we'll have one like her soon," I sighed.

"Not too soon." I looked up, and he had his eyes closed as he spoke. "I want you all to myself even just for a while."

Narrator's POV

When the rest of the Super Junior members arrived, only a handful of the EXO members were left, as each had their own schedules to follow excluding the reason for the flight to Indonesia. But life went on, just not for Donghae, of course. "Hyung, why don't we go outside and eat?" Kyungsoo invited. His voice, although trying to be cheerful, still had a degree of grief. Donghae just shook his head no.

"Go home first, okay? Look after our Min Young for a while. She might be wondering what's happening, so you'll have the chance to explain to her," Leeteuk greeted his wife with a kiss. He held her tight as another round of sobbing threatened to ensue, but Min Jae held herself together. "Donghae..." she muttered to Leeteuk as a reminder, to which he just nodded.

With his wife out of his current worries, the leader sat near Donghae on the bench outside the waiting room. He let his suitcase fall on the ground with a muffled thud. Donghae sniffled. "She prepared my luggage for me last night before we slept," he muttered sadly and looked away to conceal the tears that fell without his consent.

"Have you seen your baby already?" Jungsoo asked, glancing at the signboard that led the way to the nursery. The younger shook his head no. "Everything about him will make me remember her." His voice trembled, and Donghae didn't remember the last time he had thought of anything happy ever since he woke up next to a phone.

Sighing and letting his own tears fall, Leeteuk's gaze shifted to the patient behind the window. She wasn't Min Yu anymore. It was the life support that keeps her alive and not the Min Yu lungs and Min Yu heart that used to function so properly before. Now, it was just Min Yu the Life Support. Min Yu the IV tubes. Min Yu the Needles. Min Yu the Beeping ECG.

He laid a hand on his dongsaeng's shoulder. "What happened? Hasn't she foretold you somehow? Hasn't she told you about her condition before? I thought you regularly went to the doctor," he pressed softly. Pulling his sweater sleeves halfway up his palms, Donghae pursed his dry lips. "One day, after she went to the doctor, when I arrived home, she was nowhere to be found."

"I thought she was just joking, like let's-scare-Donghae-by-not-being-at-home game. Then I saw divorce papers on the bed." And the thought caused Donghae to burst into tears again. "I looked for her around the city and then I saw her on a bus stop. I was..." He tried catching his own breath. "I was so scared. It was already dark. What if she trips because she couldn't see anything? What if she gets hurt?"

"Then she began to tell me the conditions on the divorce papers, like how I would get full custody of the child after she gives birth. And I just..." He trailed off, crying silently. "I just didn't want to believe it was happening. I wanted so badly to believe it was just a prank she just thought of. But no," Donghae took a deep breath. "She wanted to leave."

"In the end," the man wiped his cheeks dry. "I didn't sign it. I acted as if nothing happened. And she did, too. But after that incident, Min Yu always acted as if she was going to be gone soon. She always acted like it would be the last time she would ever do the things she does. And I didn't know," he cried. "Why didn't I know?"

Leeteuk watched the lifeless Min Yu by the hospital bed. "She didn't want you to know."