A week in coma was bad; Daeyeol could tell from the expressions of the doctors who came to visit Sungyeol. They would speak in hushed voices with the nurses, and stop whenever they saw Daeyeol.

“Stay strong,” they would say to Daeyeol.

“Give me something, anything to hold on to,” he wanted to tell them but didn’t. There was no point pleading with the doctors, they were trying their best to help Sungyeol.

But were they trying their absolute best? He wanted to ask them, but couldn’t muster the courage. What if they got angry if they questioned their performance? He wouldn’t take that risk, not when Sungyeol was concerned. Sungyeol was important to him, maybe the single most important person in his life; but to the doctors he was just another patient who would probably die.

Daeyeol shivered at this though – Sungyeol was not going to die. He had spent the day reading up accounts of people coming back from coma and living on. There were some miraculous ones as well, when even after the patient had been announced as brain dead, they had woken up to everyone’s amazement. He imagined Sungyeol waking up one day, tomorrow maybe, back on his feet like nothing had happened to him, as if he didn’t miss a single of these 10 days. Daeyeol would probably cry and Sungyeol would make fun of him. His brother always . Sungyeol might even hit him jokingly to stop him crying.

When Sungyeol woke up, Daeyeol wanted to tell him how afraid he was, how panicked he was at the thought of losing Sungyeol. He couldn’t imagine life without Sungyeol. Even though he didn’t have a religion, he had prayed to someone up there – he hadn’t lived a day without his brother, and he didn’t want to.

Distracted by a tiny beeping noise, he looked at his cell phone. It was a text from Sungjong, asking about Sungyeol. Apparently hospitals made Sungjong queasy. Daeyeol wanted Sungjong to be here, waiting with him. He had a feeling that if Sungjong was here as well, if they waited together, Sungyeol would definitely come back.

Sighing, he typed 6 words and pressed sent.

Can you save my brother, please?

The day you asked me to whisper something sweet to you, darling, I wondered what I could say to make your heart flutter.

It was back in the early days of our relationship and I was trying too hard to impress. I wanted to say something that would stick with you for a long time. So that you could never forget me because every time you’d try to, you’d hear my voice inside your head, repeating the words that evoked so much emotion in you. I’m not the one for sweet nothings; I believe in things that last, love stories that never end, songs that never get old, and yellows, not blues.

So I whispered something to you, something bittersweet. Because happiness is ephemeral, but throw in a little bit of pain, and it lasts a lifetime.

I told you that baby birds eventually fly out of their nest, and despite their promises, few return to their old homes.

Fireflies glow because they are too afraid of the night, and too cowardly to face the day.

I whispered in your ears, my hand lying loosely on top of your stomach, the ends of your hair gently tickling my nose as I buried my face in your neck.

Cuckoos don’t sing in winter because spring is a distant dream they don’t dare to hope for.

I couldn’t see your face as I inhaled your scent but I knew you were looking up at the vastness above, tracing the faint stars as they started to appear one by one, finally littering the velvety blackness of the sky. I wonder now if you were really listening, my dear, or were you constructing pipe dreams in your head.

For someone who has accumulated so much sadness in life, you are unreasonably optimistic.

But, maybe that’s what attracted me so much, because it’s something I desired, something I was missing. I told myself that I give up too easily, and I need someone who’d stop me from doing that. Funny thing is, you were the first to leave.

You know what’s even funnier – even when you left first, I couldn’t give up on you.

It hurt me so much, because for once in my life I knew I couldn’t give up on something. Your presence – I craved it so much. It didn’t have to be anything special, I just loved watching you breathe, your chest rising and falling, like the ebb and flow of tide. That was enough to make me think I had everything in life.

Sadly, the thing I couldn’t give up, was the thing I couldn’t have.