My name is Paek...Paek Ji hyun.

        I am an eighteen year old high school student, soon to graduate, and leave for college. My whole life has been full of happiness, and joy. I remember looking into the koi fountains at the city's mall, admiring each color it possessed on its plump bodies. Now I am a grown up. One with a strong mind, and a weak body.

        My name is Paek Ji hyun...and I am dying of cancer.

I shook slowly, gripping the patients table beneath me. My shoulders were now straight upwards, and my eyes were wide in an instant.

I remember my mother grieving next to me, holding my hands as the doctor told us the news.

"Cancer...unfortunately Ms. Paek" he said lowering his head. He couldn't bare to tell me to my face, look a teenage girl in the eyes, and tell her she is diagnosed with the most deadliest sickness in the word.

        I didn't fight him, nor was I angered with him. What did he do wrong? You don't kill the messenger now do you?

"How long?" I managed to ask. Surprisingly, I was handling things better than my mother. The doctor scratched the stubble along his chin.

"I would say a year at the most...possibly 14 months if you get lucky" was all that escaped his mouth.

"Thank you..." I said bowing. The doctor couldn't say anything else. He was completely silent as I stood up to grab by now sobbing mother. She was a complete mess by then. I linked my arms with her, and guided her to the exit as the doctor could only hold the door for us.

I looked my mother in the eyes as we left the doctors office that day. And the one thing I could tell her was...

        "It's going to be okay. Don't worry mother. What is the worst to ever happen?" I wished I could lie to her more easily. In fact, I wished I                didn't have to lie to her at all. But it pained me to see her like this. There is nothing I could truly say, to make her stop crying.

She calmed down and nodded to me. "When we get home I will call your father" she stated simply. I didn't entirely want her to call my father...but I didn't want her worrying anymore than she already was.

          That day...I swear, the rain came down the hardest in the city of Seoul.