One.

     "Donghae! Donghae!"

     I woke up at the sound of his voice, disoriented but happy. I smiled as I reached out, only to find my fingers moving through empty air. For a second, against all the logic in the world, I thought Eunhyuk was with me again. As I became more awake though, my smile fell and familiar disappointment replaced momentary happiness. Eunhyuk's voice had only been an illusion from my dreams, and I was reminded of the fact that I was alone again.

     Getting up, I looked around the room to see the familiar white walls that I had always known. White walls, gray bed sheets, and a faded blue hospital gown were the elements that made up my life. After Eunhyuk had left, they were the only colors I could see. Sometimes I dreamed in color, but usually, I didn’t dream at all. I moved to the small window, peering sleepily out into the white morning fog and thought back to when my days had been brighter, filled with colors other than white, gray, and blue.

     I thought back to when I had first met Eunhyuk. A time when the white walls were new to me, and I hadn’t yet gotten used to the sterile smell of rubbing alcohol and bandages. Faces passed, as meaningless as the condolences they sent. Everyone had been greeting me, smiling and failing to hide their looks of pity and relief. Pity, because I had less than six months to live, relief because they had more. Faces had blurred together in my fear and misery, and I was about to drown in them until Eunhyuk had stepped through the crowd of empty comfort.

     Carefree smile, warm eyes, and an optimism I had never even thought existed. Maybe that’s why Eunhyuk had been so addictive at first sight, or maybe it was because we were so similar; two people with nothing but a dead end. I think rather than our similarities, it was our differences that brought us together though. While I had been fear and anger, he had been peace and comfort. From the very first moment I had walked into the hospital, knowing I wouldn’t come back out, Eunhyuk had been there, and Eunhyuk had made all the difference.

     Two.

     I sighed, knocking at the glass of the window, hearing the dull thuds as the force reverberated throughout the clear, flawless surface. Eunhyuk had told me stories before he had left of the things outside the confines we had lived in. Holed up in the hospital, forgetting the outside world was easy, and colors slowly faded to black and white. But Eunhyuk never forgot, because he was an artist. His dreams were his muse and with every sentence he wove together, he created a masterpiece. While I saw the world in monochrome, he saw it saturated with color. And while I saw a dead end, he saw a new beginning.

     He’d fill our void with his dreams, turning the glass that trapped us into a mirror of a better reality. Often, he would go off on tangents, and describe the sky as endless and ever changing, the sun bright and fiery, and the ocean deep and mysterious. As he talked, I would let myself get lost in the fantasies of places we reached through his words; and instead of the decaying soul I was, I became as limitless as the sky and abundant as the ocean’s water. Only Eunhyuk could be compared to the sun though; creating the light that gave my shortened life a new meaning.

     Maybe it was more accurate to compare Eunhyuk to a star, or a comet. He was bright, exploding, but when Eunhyuk inevitably fell, he crashed. Broken flower pots, shredded get well soon cards; even he had his hopeless days. His outbursts were few and far apart, but with all the desperation of a dying man, and all the fear of a small child. It was then when our roles became reversed and I became strong for him; picking up the shards of his broken hope. We helped each other through our limited days and dying became a little less painful.

     I smiled slightly, basking in the irony of the situation. Sometimes I had forgotten that he and I only had met because of our similar expiration dates. We were dying men, waste of a society that had forgotten us in the three seconds it took for us to pass through the hospital doors. But being with Eunhyuk, I had felt more alive than I ever had in the twenty six years I had lived. And funny enough, if I had the choice, to die again, to relive the six months Eunhyuk and I had spent together in exchange for a long, healthy lifetime, I would have taken my premature death and never looked back.

     Three.

     Maybe I had been the one to forget in those three seconds, how the world works. Maybe the seconds had turned to minutes, the minutes to hours, and the hours to days. Time didn’t stop for us. Everything had its end, and the reality we lived in was no exception. Dark circles, thin wrists, and skin as white as the walls that surrounded us marked the ending. But even then, Eunhyuk had simply smiled at me, and between his coughing he had told me we would meet again in a place where infinity would be possible.

     I turned away from the window, the fog was clearing and the sun’s rays came through the window. I looked around the small room, a small smile on my lips. He had saved me, Eunhyuk. With his bright eyes, gummy smile, and selfless love, he had stopped me from drowning in the emotions that would have killed me faster than any disease. But he hadn’t just saved me, letting me go on as I had been before. No, he gave me much more than life; he gave me a freedom I hadn’t even known I was missing. I was at a dead end, and he had created a door.

      Heartbeat weakening, hands shaking, I knew I didn’t have much time left. I wasn’t afraid though, not like how I was six months ago. Because death wasn’t the end, Eunhyuk had shown me that. Death was merely leaving for a new start, one with an even brighter sun, a vaster sea, a deeper ocean. A new start where Eunhyuk would be waiting, healthy, and even more alive than he had been. My smile grew, knowing I wouldn’t have to wait too much longer. Soon, I would join Eunhyuk, closing the distance that divided us, and we would escape into the world he had created.