It was too late by the time I arrived. I saw the empty bed when I came and the nurses around me cleaning up. Dr. Park came into the room moments later and motioned for me to follow him. I wanted to, but it felt like my feet were glued to the floor, I didn’t want to hear what he was going to say. Even though the reality was presented before me, I didn’t want to hear any of it. I didn’t want it to actually become real, even though it technically was.

          But that was the difference. I was always so used to my mother disappearing and reappearing and I got used to her not being around all of the time that I just automatically assumed that she would come back later. I just had it in my head that she would come back when she felt like coming back.

          “Go,” I heard a voice gently say. I looked beside me and saw Shinwoo standing there. I had completely forgotten that he had come with me. He told me that he wasn’t going to let me go alone, just like Jinyoung had.

          Dr. Park led Shinwoo and me to a small office like ones I was in countless times before. He sat down behind his desk and Shinwoo and I sat in front of him. The way he sat there, the way he looked at me with the look that I hated in his eyes, told me enough. It just confirmed it even more. The words that I so desperately needed to hear him say from his mouth didn’t come and I was forced to face reality.

          I don’t remember everything, half of it probably wasn’t even absorbed in my head, I just remembered certain parts. “Passed away”, “Not much we could do”, “Declined faster than we anticipated”, “We’re very sorry for your loss.”

          He left Shinwoo and me alone in the room telling us that he was giving us some time to digest the news, he was giving me some time to suggest the news. What was strange about the entire thing, though, is that I knew that my mother was eventually going to die. I knew that what my mother was doing to her body wasn’t good, that she was destroying herself. But somewhere along the line I probably thought that she was doing better, that somehow my mouther would come out of this a better person and that maybe we could live like a proper family. That was all ruined at that point.

          I didn’t do much thinking or much of anything else for the rest of the day. Shinwoo kept trying to talk to me about things, but I just ignored him. I ignored everything. I didn’t want to deal with the reality that was now set on my plate. For a brief moment I wondered if what I was doing was normal. Was it normal for someone to want to ignore everyone and just have time alone? Was it normal to want nothing to do with it anymore? Was it normal to just shut everyone out?

          When I arrived home it took a while to convince Shinwoo to leave. He said that he wouldn’t leave me like that, but I told him I’d be okay. I told him that I’d be fine and that if I needed anything he’d be the first one I’d call, but that was mostly because it wasn’t like I could just call Jinyoung over. I cried myself to sleep after he left.

          Waking up wasn’t any better. It only confirmed for me that everything that had happened wasn’t a dream, that my mother was really gone from the world. I couldn’t just go there and visit her anymore. I couldn’t see her, hear her voice, touch her. But I still thought it was strange. I had never once felt that way about my mother before. I normally resented her, resented the way she raised me, even the way she made me sometimes, but it was like I couldn’t anymore. I figured that it was probably because she passed away, that I finally realized what I was now going to miss.

          I called off of work that day. I didn’t go to class. I stayed at home and laid in bed thinking about things. I wouldn’t hold a funeral, there was no need. My mother didn’t really have any friends and there was definitely no family besides me. There was no one that would probably come and pay their respects and if there were, well I didn’t know about them. I had no addresses, I had no names, I was all alone.

          Finally, a couple of days later there was a knock at my door. I thought it was strange. Who would knock on my door? I first wondered if it was Shinwoo to check on me, but I didn’t see the reasoning as to why he would just suddenly show up. Or maybe it was because he was worried about me. The knocking didn’t stop, and I eventually got up to open it.

          My hair was a mess, I was lying around in clothes that were definitely too big for me, and I hadn’t really done much of anything for what was probably around a week. I hadn’t left my house for a week.

          It wasn’t Shinwoo that greeted me at the door, though. At first I had to blink a couple of times to make sure that I was actually seeing who I thought I was seeing. I had to make sure that it wasn’t some type of hallucination. My arm reacted by itself, lifting to touch the face in front of me. He smiled and it was that same gummy smile that I came to adore.

          “Look at you,” he whispered. “What are you doing here?” I stared at him a bit longer, the words escaping me. “Shocked, are you?” he chuckled.

          “How…” I began, but I didn’t know how to finish. What would he say? How would Jung Jinyoung explain how he got from the hospital bed to my front door? He was a patient, he was supposed to stay there, he had treatments, or so I thought. Even so, how would he know that I was at home?

          “Shinwoo said something, I hope you don’t mind,” Jinyoung clarified as though he had read my mind, which I swore he could do sometimes. “He said that he was worried about you, but he didn’t want to intrude.”

          “But how…” I attempted again.

          “There are ways,” he said shrugging his shoulders and offered to tell me no more. I didn’t need to hear anymore though, I was just happy that he was there. That there was someone standing there right in front of my door for me. I immediately hugged him right there in the doorway and while he was probably initially shocked at the force of my hug, he gave in and hugged me back, squeezing me.

          “It’s okay,” Jinyoung whispered and began to pat my head. “It’s okay. You can cry. Everything will be alright.” I don’t know how long we spent like that, but it was nice. There was just something reassuring about him being there.

          We eventually moved to the wooden platform where we sat in silence. Maybe he thought that I just needed the quiet to gather my thoughts or that it would somehow be comforting.

          “Shouldn’t you…shouldn’t you be going back?” I wondered. I didn’t really want him to go, but he was supposed to be in the hospital. I didn’t want to compromise his health in any way. I wanted him to be healthy, I wanted him to live for a long time. I just wanted him to stay with me forever.

          “I think I can do for one night,” he responded looking at the sky and suddenly it felt like old times. It felt like back when he would randomly show up and we would spent hours looking at the stars from that very wooden platform. It felt like everything was as it should be, that nothing was wrong and we were just two simple young adults living their lives.

          “Oppa,” I sternly said and glared at him. He could probably sense my slight anger towards him, or rather he could hear the strong tone I used, and turned to look towards me. “You shouldn’t be doing this to your health. Don’t you know how dangerous it is?”

          “I think I know how dangerous it is, Minyoung,” he calmly responded. “Don’t you think I know everything? I just want to spend some time with you, that’s all.”

          “I’m just…afraid,” I said thinking back to Shinwoo’s advice that he told me. Jinyoung waited for me to continue. “I’m just…you know…afraid about you dying… Now that my mother’s gone…”

          Jinyoung enveloped me again without saying another word. He silently held me before speaking. “I’m afraid too,” he sighed. “But we don’t know what’ll happen in the future.”

          It felt like he wanted to say more but he left it there. He let the silence envelop us and take us into the night. When I woke in the morning he was gone, back to the hospital I presumed. And like any other morning that had happened a thousand times before, I got up, washed, dressed, and prepared myself for the day. I wasn’t entirely sure what happened, but I suddenly felt good. I felt better than I had in quite a while. I felt like I was a new me, like I was reborn, like I was ready for whatever the world wanted to throw at me.