I gulped and my eyes began to water. I blinked back the tears and spoke past the thing choking me up.

"How long?"

"Almost a year." he spoke matter-of-factly. "That's what the doctors say." The irony almost made me laugh. A doctor was given a time limit.

"What... What is it?" I asked.

"Cancer. It's in my blood. There's no treatment." he said sadly.

"Why are you telling me this first?" I asked. "Why not your father, or Ae Sook or Cho Hee?" His mother had passed about 5 years ago. I was at the funeral and I saw the way he sobbed. He was always a mommy's boy while I was the perfect daddy's girl.

His eyes glistened. "Can you do me a favor?" he asked, avoiding my question.

I nodded.

"Can you not tell them?" he asked.

"Why not?" I asked again.

"I don't want them to be sad."

"They'll be even more if it's... You know... Sudden." I said.

"I just don't want them to know yet..."

I let a tear fall and Junghwa-oppa wiped it with one thumb.

"Why are you telling me then?" I asked, the tears flowing like a stream now.

"I want to ask you a favor..." he said.

"Another?"

He nodded. "Will you... Spend what's left of my life with me?"

I couldn't speak, so I only nodded. Spontaneously, I reached over and hugged him, resting my head on his chest and soaking his shirt in tears.

"I love you, Kim-ssi." he said.

"I love you too." I said. 

The mailman dropped off all of my mail. There was a full box of letters that I would have to go through later. And the package was simply the cast that I had left in Jiyong-ssi's car by accident. I smiled to myself.

I hardly ever left Junghwa-oppa's side during the entire week. And when I did, I came back super fast, as if he was a baby I was turning my back to that could fall over at any minute. We got rid of the officetel and the furniture I didn't want. Some of them, I wanted to send to Turkey, but I realized it would be way cheaper not to.

It was