While it is true that I’m now quite the poster girl for sickness, I used to be exceptionally healthy as a child. The only time I remember falling sick was when I was thirteen going on fourteen years old. I remember it vividly for three things. One, that I had hit a record high fever of 40 degrees. Two, that it was my birthday. And three, that Jongin was with me.

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Winter, 2009

I had been quarantined, confined to my tiny room. Ara had been sleeping with some of the other younger girls for the past few nights, and was going to continue doing so until my fever subsided. There wasn’t much to do other than read or listen to music, but the boredom hardly got to me. I was honestly too dazed by the fever to move.

The fever had started sinking in two days before, and I’d complained of muscle aches and tiredness before Mom had decided to measure my temperature. What ensued had been an immediate order to bed, with a cool pack and lots of warm water. The whole ordeal had seemed fun to me at first, for I’d never fallen sick before, but soon as the haziness settled in, I decided that being sick was not as fun as I thought it might have been.

I had hoped and prayed that I would get better, but when my birthday rolled over and the fever showed no sign of subsiding, I decided to let simply wait it out, to let my body take care of itself in due time. I was going to spend my birthday in bed this year, alone, uncomfortable, it seemed like there was no way out of this.

Nobody was allowed in except for Mom, who appeared once in a while to give me medicine or to dab at my face with a cool piece of cloth. Sometimes she watched me, but I was too riddled with fever to talk, too tired to even sleep. Instead I drifted in and out of slumber, my dreams melding with reality until I wasn’t sure where I was.

The sun was only beginning to set, but the curtains were drawn close and the room was swathed in cool darkness save for the slice of setting sun that peeked through the windows. There was a knock on my door, and I opened my eyes blearily, shifting uncomfortably beneath the thick of my blankets. I was hot one minute then cold the next, and I’d gotten tired of repeatedly wrapping and unwrapping myself from my cocoon, so now I was shivering but covered in a layer of dried sweat. I was too preoccupied with trying to pull a blanket that had dropped onto the floor to notice that Jongin had walked into the room.

“Rin.” His voice was soft, solemn.

My mouth hung open, as he took a seat beside my bed. It reminded me so much of the time I’d asked him to be my boyfriend that I had to blink my eyes a few times to bring myself back to the present. I had not expected him to come; it had been months since he last visited. We had been together for almost a year, but we’d only gone out thrice more after that first time.

“Hi,” I managed to choke out. My voice was a raspy whisper. I kind of hated myself then, for falling sick when he had come. We could have been playing with the kids together, or taking another walk along the pier. We could have gone on a date, yet here I was confined to bed.

We sat in silence for a moment, until he asked, “How are you?” He reached down to feel my forehead, smiling as I mumbled an indecipherable answer. I was tired but I couldn’t sleep, and it left my thoughts more jumbled than I liked them to be. “You don’t look so good,” he frowned, and through the haze of fever I liked to believe that I saw a sliver of concern in his eyes.

“Not so good,” I agreed, and he gave me a small smile again.

It was times like these when I thought I’d truly gotten to Jongin. He still hardly visited, and he was always tired when he did, but he smiled more, laughed more. Looked at me more. I thought this meant that he was starting to see me as someone he could grow to love.

I might not be able to say now that he loved me in the three years that we’d dated, but I certainly liked to fool myself into thinking so. Either way, now that I reminiscence, he must have warmed up to me, even if just slightly.

His fingers lingered on my face, tracing down the curve of my cheek. They were warm, despite the wintry wind that he must have just come in from.

“You’re hot,” I said, reaching out and pulling him down to me. The fever had left me uncharacteristically cold, and his body heat called out to me like a beacon of light in the dark.

Despite everything, he chuckled, allowing me to pull him towards me. It must not have been a very comfortable position, for he decided after a slight pause to shove me lightly to the side and climb into bed with me. I hadn’t been out of bed much, and I knew that I was sticky with cold sweat and probably not smelling as fresh as a girl should when meeting her boyfriend, but if he noticed any of these things, he deigned to comment.

I wrapped my arms around his waist and snuggled into his chest. He felt so nice, warm and comfortable and reassuring. I wonder if he had asked for Mom’s permission to come in, or if he had disregarded her warnings of germs and falling sick and entered anyway.

Jongin began humming a soft tune, and the vibrations in his chest combined with his arms wrapped tightly around my shoulders slowly lulled me to sleep. I tried to keep awake, wanting to savour the feeling of being in his arms, but I was in too cosy a position, his body a perfect cocoon to hide myself in. I found my eyelids fluttering shut.

“You should sleep,” Jongin murmured, his voice floating from somewhere above me. I had tucked my head into the crook of his neck, and his chin rested right above the crown of my head.

I made a sound of protest, but he started patting me lightly on the back, and I was all but floating to dreamland. The body aches seemed to subside, as did the constant need to pull on multiple blankets and then throw them aside. Everything settled down into a state of muted peace, with me in Jongin’s arms, fingers clutching lightly at his jumper, and for a moment, I could forget about the fever-

“Wait,” I sat up abruptly, wincing as my head spun from the sudden movement. He glanced at me questioningly, not moving from his position on the bed. “I can’t hug you.”

“Because I’m too hot?” The corner of his lips twitched, and I resisted the urge to smile. He was being funny today. His walls were down and he was voluntarily letting me in. I wanted to jump back into his arms, but something pulled me back. I shouldn’t. I couldn’t.

“I’m sick, Jongin,” I said. “You can’t hug a sick person.” I pushed him lightly, telling him to get off the bed and away from me. “You’ll catch my germs.”

He was silent for a moment, before nodding in understanding and getting up, moving back to his chair beside the bed. I lay back into my blankets, suddenly feeling colder and before, and let out a small sigh. As much as I wanted to remain in his arms forever, I knew that I couldn’t risk him getting sick. I had to be a good girlfriend, I had to. Jongin was more important than my selfish needs.

I closed my eyes and murmured, “You’re going to be bored sitting there.”

Even though my eyelids were shut, I knew he was shaking his head. I had spent the past year learning everything about him, and I could predict what he was going to do even before he knew himself.

“I’m going to check on the kids.”

My heart gave a sad squeeze, but I forced myself to nod, lifting my lips up into a small smile. He got up from the chair and made his way downstairs. He was halfway out the room when I called him.

“Jongin?”

He turned, and there was a pause as I looked into those beautiful eyes, drank in the strong jawline and supple lips. Lips that I had kissed—a few times, now— but felt like I never had enough of. He turned around to look at me, and I was struck, once again, by how perfect he was and how much I knew I loved him.

“What is it?” He asked softly.

I didn’t say anything, only looked into his eyes, deciding then and there that I wanted Jongin to be the last person I thought about when I died.

“Nothing,” I replied, equally soft. “Have fun with the kids.”

He gave me another nod, and then he was out the door and out of my sight. I buried my face into my pillow, suddenly feeling a million times worse. I turned to the side, watching the watery orange glow of the sun faded into night, sighing as an angry tear escaped from my eye, whispering the words I had said to him to many times before.

“I love you.”

Somehow, it felt better saying those words in the dim light of the room, where I was cold and alone, than to my boyfriend who had never said them back.

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What a miracle, I'm alive! Thank you all for patiently waiting, life has been tough these past few months. I will not abandon this story (see what I did there HA) Short update for y'all while I work on a longer one for the next chapter <3