The office was, oddly, very colorful. Patterned curtains in spring colors were draped over the large, floor-to-ceiling windows, various multicolored knickknacks were littered across the desk, and a rainbow of letters were strung over the cupboards. In an alcove, frames of the same, smiling family of four –probably the doctor’s family– adorned the space, a reminder of home and how it wasn’t that far.

It was a farce, Wendy knew. A coping mechanism of sorts. The five-year survival rate for patients with acute myeloid leukemia was 26%. No doctor– Scratch that, no normal human being would be able to stare death in the face every day without some kind of coping mechanism.

“Wendy?”

She turned back to the doctor, who looked at her with an amiable, empathic smile. She wanted to tell him she didn’t need the empathy, but she also didn’t want to be rude.

“Sorry, Dr. Moon,” she said. “What did you say?”

“Oh,” he smiled, “I just asked how you were.”

Wendy drew her breath and pressed on a reciprocal smile. “I’m fine.”

“Great. How’s school?”

“Alright. School holidays.”

“Oh, wonderful. My children are having school holidays too,” he said, gazing fondly at the photo frames. Wendy followed his eyes, looking more closely this time at the doctor’s children – a boy and a girl, whose recent photos seemed like they were about her age. “They’re probably in the hospital library somewhere. Always got their noses in books, those two. I wish they’d go out and get some sun.”

“Oh,” Wendy nodded.

She didn’t know what to say to that. She couldn’t identify with the first-world problems of picture-perfect families. They lapsed into silence, with Wendy’s thoughts slowly filling the room.

“So, Wendy,” Dr. Moon said, steepling his fingers. “What can I do for you today?”

Wendy moved her gaze back to her hands. They had become cold and clammy, shaking quietly. She had prepared a whole list of things to say, but it all left her mind. She was back in the abyss, the one she’d been facing ever since her mother first got her diagnosis.

But she had to say something. She had to. She’d been going back-and-forth for weeks. She couldn’t afford to do that any longer, not when she was running out of time, fighting an invisible hourglass with an unforeseeable amount of sand seeping away.

“Dr. Moon,” Wendy inhaled. “How many more years does my mom have to live?”

“So let me get this straight – your mother has leukemia and your brother wants you to donate your bone marrow to her for a transplant?”

They were all very plausible words – applied on someone who wasn’t Nakamoto Yuta. Wendy blinked, like Yuta would break out in laughter about it all being a poorly timed April Fool’s Joke.

But he remained solemn. It wasn’t April. And it obviously wasn’t a joke.

“Oh.” Wendy cleared . That was awkward. She got to her feet, figuring walking about would help her digest the revelation better. But the newfound information wasn’t food, and a rude shock after decades of calm would startle the daylights out of anyone.

“Why didn’t you tell me earlier?” she finally said, though the semblance of clarity she needed hadn’t reached her brain yet.

Yuta shrugged, sipping at his cup of tea. “I just found out, too.”

He had meant to tell her much later, at least after he had come to an internal decision, but Yixing –obviously under Seulgi’s influence– had suggested otherwise. He was bracing himself, but he also wasn’t – part of him probably thought it would be nice to have someone react more strongly than he did.

“Oh,” Wendy said again. She stopped pacing about and slowly lowered herself onto a chair.

She was taking it much more calmly than he had expected, which was strange. Wendy Son was the girl who cried herself into a puddle after her favorite band’s concert, or beat someone into pulp when they so much as stepped on her toe. She had taken on a more mellow tone over the past few years, but he didn’t expect her to be that mellow. Where are the sparks, fires and explosions?

Who are you and what’ve you done to Wendy Son? Yuta thought amusedly. How she’d grown. How they’d all grown.

“So,” Wendy continued, “what do you plan to do? Do you plan to actually donate your bone marrow?”

“I don’t know yet,” he replied. “Should I?”

“I mean, what are you leaning towards?”

Wendy was being careful – extremely careful. He wouldn’t be surprised if she was possessed by Jaehyun or Seulgi.

“Well, I guess I probably should. It’s a relatively uncomplicated procedure, and T-cells can regenerate again. In the grand scheme of things, I can think of it as a blood donation, just that I can’t do one as often,” Yuta joked.

Wendy smiled, restrained and uncomfortable. He’d known her a lifetime – he knew why she was walking on eggshells. She had seen him hurt, over and over again, by the hope he had for the people he once wanted to think were his family. But that hope had been slowly chipped away, and Yuta wasn’t the same, wide-eyed, idyllic boy of his teens.

She probably knew that he wasn’t convinced, either. Only Wendy Son would know that while Yuta was usually a peaceful, conflict-avoidant person, there was some resentment he held very close to him. Not enough to deprive someone of a chance to live, but also enough think twice about giving away part of himself to someone who gave him away.

And if, God forbid, he decided to give it away, he’d have to leave Seoul for a while, and they both wouldn’t know when he would come back.

Wendy levelled her eyes on him, still rather unsettled. “Will you go to Tokyo?”

Yuta wished he had a better answer, but his shoulders still came up into a Jaehyun-esque shrug. “Maybe.”

“Wendy? Wendy?”

The second emphasis brought her back to earth. The first was more of a muffled call barely piercing her litany of thoughts. Wendy looked up, finding her client holding up two sets of ivory linens into confusion.

“Oh, oh, so sorry!” Wendy exclaimed. She looked at Yoona with an anxious smile. “Right, so those are the most popularly requested styles of linens, and I think they’d go well with your light-colored floral centerpiece.”

She was scolding herself internally – how could she daydream during her job? Blasphemy that Yuta would’ve– Yuta.

Leaving.

Yoona peeped over, smiling kindly. “Need a break?”

Wendy nearly bonked herself on the head. “No, no,” she insisted, waving her hands. She was not about to up a client that was one of Taeyeon’s best friends – she’d be fired within seconds. “I’m absolutely fine, really.”

“Well, I think I need a coffee break,” Yoona said. She shot Wendy a thoughtful, knowing look and waved over one of the passing staff. “Could we get two cappuccinos, please?”

Wendy gaped. “No, oh my god, Ms. Im, I’m so sorry–“

“I insist.”

Yoona’s smile was radiant, almost ethereal – like she had came straight out of The Sound of Music. One look and Wendy knew she was one of those clients who was essentially perfect, and probably had boys tripping over themselves to marry her – Yixing’s friend was probably a lucky bastard.

The cappuccinos came, Yoona’s hypnotizing beauty probably a factor to the lightning speed. Wendy gazed at her, gingerly attempting to strike conversation. “So,” she started, “it must be tough for you, Ms. Im, planning such a big wedding.”

“It is,” she replied, “but it’s a long time in the making. We’ve been talking about marriage for years, but never really decided to make it happen until now.”

“Oh,” Wendy said. Her first instinct was to ask, but she knew her prying could send clients in the opposite direction. Then again, Yoona seemed open-hearted enough not to mind. “Logistical difficulties?”

Yoona sighed. “Yes and no. You see, Han works in Beijing, and I’m stuck here in Seoul. Even planning to have dinner is hard, let alone a full-blown wedding,” she chuckled, shaking her head. “Sometimes I wonder if we can really make it work, or whether the wedding is just a temporary band-aid for the bigger relationship problems we’ll face in the long run.”

Uh-oh. Wendy wasn’t Jaehyun or Yuta, but she could sense when someone was bothered by something. She also knew when said issue was just the tip of the iceberg.

But Yoona continued to smile sportingly, keeping her composure as well as she always had. “It’s nice to have the girls give me some space today, but I’m actually grateful for all the noise,” she joked. A more sad, wistful look glazed over her eyes. “It lets me forget that after all the fanfare, I’ll probably still be having dinner alone.”

Wendy could feel a crackle and fizz in her heart. Before she could stop herself, she blurted out: “So, why?” Why marry him? Why go through with it when he won’t even be there for you?

Why are you making yourself available for someone who’ll just leave you alone?

“Because I love him.” Yoona gazed at her, eyes brave and convicted. “And I know he loves me, too.”

They say you should lift with your knees and not your back. By ‘they’, Wendy meant Jaehyun, Johnny and Yuta, not a bunch of fluffed-up philosophers.

Throughout college, they were the ones who helped her, Seulgi and Jungwoo move from place to place, like when Jungwoo’s squalid one-bedroom was infested with rats, or when Seulgi decided she couldn’t stay with Wendy anymore, in favor of somehow building bridges with Jungwoo. It was no wonder all three of those men commanded a legion of fans – they basically had to bench-press moving boxes for close to four years.

And counting.

“Where do these go?” Yuta asked, his head peeking out behind a large cardboard box. With the size of the boxes, it almost seemed like the boxes walked themselves to the truck.

Mark cheerfully hopped off the back of the truck. “Here, here,” he said, gesturing Yuta to the area he had piled the rest of his boxes.

A succession of thuds resounded in Wendy’s ears. “These are awfully heavy,” Wendy complained, groaning under the weight of Mark’s things.

“Weak ,” Jaehyun snorted. Naturally, he rubbed salt in her wounds by holding his box up with only one hand. Asshat.

Just as Wendy was about to bombard him an earful, a girl with smiling eyes bounded over. “I’ll help!” she chirruped. She took Wendy’s boxes from her and proceeded to rush towards