“Not matched?” Mrs. Kim incredulously asks, standing up from the chair she is sitting across the doctor’s table. “What do you mean we’re not matched? We’re her parents. We’re supposed to be.”

“Unfortunately, not, Mrs. Kim,” the doctor calmly tells Hyesung’s mother, who obviously has gone from worried to delirious. They have all the money but if they’re not matched, how are they supposed to proceed with the surgery to save their only child?

“HLA proteins were tested. Everyone has their own set of proteins in the surface of their blood cells, to check the compatibility for transplant possibility, in cases like this. Members of your close family are the most likely to have similar protein, regrettably, there’s only one in two hundred chance that parents and children are one hundred percent HLA matches.”

Mrs. Kim weakens as she falls back on her sit, covering her face and sobbing. Just the thought of losing Hyesung, her precious daughter, is already too much for her. It hurts so much that just the thought of losing Hyesung is killing her.

Mr. Kim opens his mouth to say something, anything, to suggest what they can possibly to do save their only child, but he is a businessman. He is a rich man, married to a beautiful woman, and supposedly, they are to raise a perfect daughter. This isn’t part of the plan. How is he supposed to deal with something unplanned like this? He doesn’t know what to do, and it breaks his heart to realize that while they talk here inside the doctor’s office, their daughter might be fighting for her life, might be in the biggest battle of her life despite her young age.

“I’d like to suggest something,” the old doctor suddenly says, looking hopeful at Hyesung’s parents. “It’s off the record, please, and I just want you to know that I’m not supposed to suggest something like this. But Hyesungie’s situation is time sensitive, we all know that, and if nothing is done, it might be too late.”

Hyesung’s parents look at the doctor.

“Have you considered having another child?”

Jongwoon stares at the paint on his ceiling and he wonders when it became so dark.

He recalls his older sister liking pastel colors. He recalls his older sister buying him various cakes and pastries. He recalls his older sister playing video games with him. He recalls his older sister laughing and talking with him about everything until their mother would scold them for staying up late. He recalls his older sister falling in love, having her heart broken by her first love, and Jongwoon beating the crap out of that bastard.

He smiles, and his heart aches because he wonders why can’t it be all good memories?

He recalls his older sister throwing up blood. He recalls his older sister coughing blood. He recalls his older sister bleeding, and the blood won’t stop no matter how many bandages Jongwoon put, no matter how hard he pressured the wound, and no matter how much Hyesung already feel pained. He recalls his father carrying her older sister to the ambulance’s emergency bed. He recalls hearing his mother cry all night when she thinks all of them is already asleep.

He recalls being Hyesung for the first time and he recalls meeting Kyuhyun.

“Jongwoon, you’re older sister needs bone marrow…”

“Jongwoon, you’re older sister needs blood…”

“Jongwoon, you’re older sister needs your kidney…”

Jongwoon barely recalls any of it, not because he can’t anymore but because he doesn’t want to.

He only wants to remember those happy memories with his older sister.

Jongwoon has an older sister, Hyesung. Hyesung has always been their parents’ favorite, because she is the only child they ever wanted. Having Jongwoon, and keeping Jongwoon, is because of Hyesung as well, for Hyesung’s security and to save Hyesung. It was never an intention to have Jongwoon in their lives. It was as if Jongwoon isn’t their child, like Hyesung was their only chid.

When Hyesung was young, she was diagnosed with Ewing’s sarcoma, a primary bone cancer.

Jongwoon was conceived through in vitro fertilization, a method of assisted reproductive technology to assist fertility of a child who is to be born to provide an organ, or a cell, or bone marrow, to a sibling who is affected with a fatal disease. The fertilization is monitored and tested for genetic compatibility, such that the child to be born is perfectly compatible with the sick child.

They are called savior sibling.

They are born to save their sibling, to donate something that could possibly endanger their lives in the future, something that could never be replaced, in order to save their sibling.

Jongwoon is like that before.

When Hyesung was still alive, when he could still be considered a savior sibling, Jongwoon couldn’t understand the risk of it all, just the fact that his parents are making him go through different surgeries and operations in order to keep his older sister alive, and Jongwoon would do it, because he loves his parents and he loves his older sister.

Because of Jongwoon, Hyesung was healed.

Because since Jongwoon was born, he was constantly in the hospital with his older sister, to donate bone marrow, to donate blood. Sometimes he was there because of infections, because of too many surgeries and operations over a short period of time, because Hyesung needed it, because Hyesung would die without it. There was even a time when he almost died because of the infection, but his parents made sure to save Jongwoon, for Hyesung.

Nevertheless, Hyesung was healed and Jongwoon regretted none of it, because he was able to save his older sister, and their parents are happy. He regretted none of the times when he was in pain, alone, at the hospital while his parents are at the other room with Hyesung. He regretted none of those times because he was glad he was able to save Hyesung.

It has always been Hyesung’s dream to be a game creator. Games fascinate her so much, and it’s also because she and Jongwoon loved playing games so much. She once told Jongwoon that the main character of the first game she’ll create will be Jongwoon. She promised Jongwoon.

But her parents wouldn’t have that.

“What? What future will that give you, darling?” Mrs. Kim chuckles, caressing Hyesung’s hair.

“You should take over our business, sweet child,” Mr. Kim put down the newspaper he is reading slightly to look at Hyesung and smile gently at her.

“No, she’ll definitely take over our business,” Mrs. Kim says.

In the end, Hyesung didn’t pursue her dreams, and instead went with her parents’ decision.

She was in her first year in college, and Jongwoon was a junior in high school, when they started noticing that Hyesung wasn’t growing, and if looked carefully, has been shrinking.

“Her bone cancer recurred,” Dr. Soojin sadly says. “And she was also diagnosed with Achondroplasia.”

Hyesung stopped growing literally, and her cancer cells were mutilating and spreading on her body faster than before. It couldn’t be stopped by chemotherapy and it soon began affecting her organ. By her supposedly second year in college, it was as if Hyesung was gone. She didn’t look like herself at all anymore. The medicines were only helping to keep Hyesung alive, but not to help her live.

It wasn’t long before Hyesung’s organs were beginning to fail to function.

“We need Jongwoon’s kidney!”

“We’re going to get Jongwoon’s kidney for Hyesung.”

It was as if Jongwoon was some kind of a commodity, like a blood bag that will be opened regardless of what, no matter what, when Hyesung needed it, for Hyesung. They could take all of Jongwoon’s organs, for Hyesung’s every failing organ, it if wouldn’t be called homicide, but Hyesung loved Jongwoon.

She loved him more than anything, anybody else, and it killed her that she was killing her beloved brother.

“What are you doing here?” Hyesung suspiciously asks a boy who enters her room.

The boy looks confused and looks around. “Ah, I’m sorry!” he says, looking really embarrassed and apologetic, “I got in the wrong room. I’m sorry.”

Hyesung’s face softens and she remembers Jongwoon. Ever since her cancer recurred, she has been confined at the hospital because this is what’s best, according to the doctor and her parents. She hasn’t seen Jongwoon so much unless Jongwoon is there to donate some bone marrow, or blood, or visit her, which their parents don’t allow too much.

“It’s okay,” Hyesung smiles at the young boy softly and the boy stares at her smile, so beautiful.

“Where have you been?” Dr. Soojin asks Kyuhyun, opening the boxes of lunch she prepares for Sooyeon and Kyuhyun.

“I,” Kyuhyun starts, then he smiles as Sooyeon raises her brow at him, “I just got lost.”

Kyuhyun was a fine young man, then. He is still now, except that he doesn’t remember anything. He doesn’t remember Hyesung, and he doesn’t remember the Hyesung he talked to whenever the real Hyesung can’t even open her eyes because of the pain anymore.

He and Sooyeon would often visit Sooyeon’s aunt in the hospital when Soojin was still working at Seoul, because Soojin spoils Sooyeon a lot, and by default, Kyuhyun would come with Sooyeon, because of his promise to protect Sooyeon always. He would come with Sooyeon at the hospital, but he’ll sneak from time to time to come mistakenly to that room of the girl who has a very beautiful smile.

“Are you visiting someone? Why are you always here in my room instead of the person you’re visiting?”

“I’m not here to visit anybody, actually. My friend, she’s here to visit her aunt who is a doctor here.”

“Really?”

“Dr. Soojin, do you know her?”

“Yes! She’s my doctor!”

“Oh.”

Hyesung smiles weakly at Kyuhyun. “I have cancer, you see.”

Kyuhyun isn’t visiting a doctor of her friend when he doesn’t even know the doctor’s name, or what the doctor’s specialty is, or what kind of patients is she treating. “I see,” he tries his best to smile back but it doesn’t feel right.

Kyuhyun and Hyesung became friends, even though they don’t see and talk to each other regularly, and they don’t know anything about the other except for the name and what they talk to inside Hyesung’s room at the hospital. It’s almost unreal, because when they became friends, it was in the most difficult time of Hyesung’s life and she wished she could have spent more time living, to spend time with both Jongwoon and Kyuhyun.

Because Jongwoon was the reason why she was able to live.

And Kyuhyun was the one who made her realize what it was like to really live.

“Really? You like games?”

“Yes,” Hyesung smiles fondly.

“I’ve never been good at games. That’s why I hate them,” Kyuhyun shrugs.

Hyesung chuckles lightly. “We used to play together a lot, that’s why I always wanted to be a game creator. It’s been my dream.”

Kyuhyun raises his eyebrow. “How come you’re going to take business then?”

“I,” Hyesung stops, feeling embarrassed not with Kyuhyun but with herself. Really, why is she taking business when she knows she wants to make games, for her, and for her little brother? “It’s my parents’ decision.”

“You know,” Kyuhyun says gently, “we live everyday. But at some point in my life, I don’t know when,” he laughs, “I realized that we don’t live everyday. Like now, the second that’s passing by now, this date, this same hour and same minutes that we spent talking, it will not be the same tomorrow. The date will not be the same, and the hour and the minutes and the seconds will not be the same. It might seem like they are, but they’re really not. It’s funny, that the most important thing in life, I think, is time.”

“Why?”

“Because you can’t buy it. You can’t bring it back. You can’t stop it. You can’t do anything about it. We’re all equal with time. You just have to make the best use of your own.”

Hyesung’s eyes tears up and Jongwoon’s face flashes on her mind.

How long has she been making her little brother suffer?

How long has she been hindering Jongwoon from living the life of his own?

How long has she been alive, but not truly living?

“You only live once, they say,” Kyuhyun adds, smiling at Hyesung softly. “It’s true, in a way that, you only live once for this second, for this minute and for this hour.”

Kyuhyun watches Hyesung gently, and it’s not really in Kyuhyun to make girl cry, but at that time, he realizes that he probably did something more than make a girl cry and he wishes that he really did, because she is an important friend. She is important to Kyuhyun.

“Don’t you remember me? At all?” Kyuhyun suddenly asks, cheeks a little pink tainted. “The tree? Sandwiches? Picnic?”

Hyesung sniffs a little and looks at Kyuhyun confusedly, to which Kyuhyun takes that she doesn’t remember him or anything from before. How long has it been anyway? Ten years? It doesn’t matter, anyway, because what’s important is now.

“Never mind,” Kyuhyun says with a wave of his hand and a smile.

They can you can’t fight fate. Well, the truth is, you actually can, at some point, in some ways, but not entirely because when the universe decides that it’s your time, can you really stop it? Can you really demand the heavens to give you another minute, another hour, another day? So, when Hyesung decides that it’s time, it’s not because she’s suicidal, or she’s tired of her treatments, or anything equally suicidal-looking like that. It’s because she has accepted her fate, and she knew that it was really her time already.

The kidney transplant was the surgery that never happened.

The kidney transplant, taking one of Jongwoon’s kidney and giving it to Hyesung’s because her kidneys weren’t functioning anymore, was the surgery that never took place, because Hyesung died before it could even happen.

“It’s time, my Woonie,” Hyesung voice is barely a soft whisper, barely audible for Jongwoon to hear, but Jongwoon stays beside his older sister, holding her hand tightly. She smiles at her little brother, a smile that seems softer, gentler than any smile she ever gave anybody. Her eyes twinkle as she gaze lovingly at Jongwoon, a gaze that seems longer than before.

“Don’t cry,” she whispers, because Jongwoon isn’t crying. He is practically convulsing and he can barely hold himself together, his shoulders trembling violently and tears cascading from his eyes endlessly. She hushes softly, “Don’t cry. It will be okay… It’s going to be okay.”

No, it’s not, Jongwoon thinks.

No, it’s not, noona!

No… No, it’s not…

“Here,” Hyesung suddenly takes a letter under her covers and gives it to Jongwoon.

“What… What is this, noona?” Jongwoon manages to ask, between his sobs and hiccups.

“For you…” Hyesung smiles at him, her eyes closing slowly and slowly, “And Mom and Dad…”

Jongwoon holds his sister’s hand even tighter, not wanting to let go, never wanting to let go.

“I’ll always love you… Thank you… And I’m really sorry…”