While life could never really go back to normal, while nothing I would do would ever really be the same, I was somehow okay with it. Life began to have a new routine, a new way of living. It just only took me a couple of months to get to that point.

          It was just one of those days when I saw Jinyoung. I hugged him as soon as I went up to him, I didn’t even give him a chance to put his guitar down. He was knocked off his balance a bit, but was able to regain his composure to hug me back. “Hey, everything alright?” he wondered. I sighed and nodded my head and he thankfully seemed to understand me through the silence. “Just one of those days?” he asked and I nodded my head again. I don’t know how long we stayed like that, but when I finally pulled away, he gave me one of the smiles that melted me inside. He looked at me like I was his entire world, like I was everything.

          “Thanks,” I said with a smile that matched his.

          “Thanks? Thanks for what? I didn’t do anything,” he said, but it was something he always said. He may have known exactly why I was thanking him, why I felt that way every day, but he never really responded to it. He always just joked it off and said that he never needed to be thanked, but he did. Or at least I thought he did.

          Sometimes I thought my way of thinking was strange, but my mother’s death opened my eyes to so many more opportunities and things that I was missing simply because I decided to stay in my room. I had to face the world sooner or later, and sooner it was. I wasn’t going to end up regretting things like I did with my mother. I wasn’t going to live my life in regret. I went out of my way to visit her every day and to tell her about my day, to tell her about how I was doing. Shinwoo went out of his way to prepare a nice place for her.

          “So, what are you writing today?” I wondered as I sat on the hospital bed and looked at his notebook. I couldn’t understand anything, though. It was all just a bunch of lines and circles, really. I knew that he was writing music, I could identify it, but I didn’t understand anything that was in front of me. And as if he thought I could, Jinyoung quickly closed his notebook and tucked it behind his pillow. “You won’t let me see?”

          “Not yet,” he said shaking his head as he made sure that the notebook was neatly tucked away. “You’ll get to hear it when I say you can.”

          “And when will that be? Never?” I wondered. He had been writing in that practically every single day. His guitar was out on his lap and the papers were spread in front of him as though he was trying to decipher something.

          “It’ll be one day, I promise,” he said leaning over to kiss me on the forehead. “So are you and Shinwoo hanging out today?”

          “No,” I said shaking my head. “Why?” I waited for a response but didn’t get one. “Wait,” I said, it finally dawning on me. “Are you…jealous?” Jinyoung didn’t say anything and began to busy himself by doing something. “Aww, you’re jealous, aren’t you, oppa?” I asked.

          Shinwoo and I had started hanging out a bit more after the death of my mother. I don’t know if it was Jinyoung’s doing, but somehow he and I started just talking more and became friends. It kind of felt nice to have someone else that I could rely on as well. But it wasn’t like I had any feelings for Shinwoo, he was just a friend, a friend of Jinyoung’s who I happened to become close to. It was still Jinyoung for me, it was always going to be Jinyoung.

          “Maybe a little,” he slowly admitted.

          “I promise you’ll never be replaced. I’m going to wait for you until the end of time,” I said with a big smile across my face, an attempt to make the atmosphere light.

          “Don’t do that,” he whispered, his voice was barely over a whisper, and if I wasn’t focused at that moment, I might have missed it. But he looked at me straight in the eye and repeated those words. “Don’t do that, don’t wait for me until the end of time.”

          “Why? You want me to fall in love with someone like Shinwoo-oppa?” I wondered in an attempt to make another light joke because I knew where the conversation was going to go and I didn’t particularly want to go that route that day. I didn’t want to talk about the future, or perhaps the lack thereof. I’d like to think that Jinyoung was going to be out of the hospital one day, good and well, and we’d be able to have the future we’ve always dreamed of. Even if we didn’t say that type of future aloud to one another, I’d like to have it.

          “If that’s what makes you happy,” he replied.

          “Well it’s not. What makes me happy is imagining a future with you. A future where we’re married, we have kids, and we spent the rest of our lives just…being with one another.” I didn’t know how to get my thoughts across because even saying them to him was scary for me. My heart was racing so loudly that I could hear it in my ears. My breath started quickening and I was sure that I was starting to babble on at that point, but I didn’t care. I needed to tell Jinyoung what I was thinking, I needed to tell him what I was feeling about him, about us. What it was what I wanted from him, what it was I hoped I could have.

          “Minyoung…” he began.

          “No,” I said cutting him off. “I’m serious when I say these things. You’re the man that I love. The man that I fell in love with and I want all of these things with you. Okay? I never wanted them before. I was always afraid about settling down, I sometimes wondered if I would be capable of doing those things, but after spending time with you, getting to know you…falling in love with you… I was able to see that I wanted those things, that I’d be able to do those things. Jung Jinyoung, I love you.”

          He didn’t say anything, but he didn’t have to. The look on his face said everything for me. It told me that he appreciated me, that he never wanted to leave my side. And that was when it hit me again, when I realized how much I had changed in the span of time that I met Jinyoung. I went from wanting nothing with no one to wanting everything with one person. I was amazed at how things could change in such a seemingly short amount of time.

          “You know,” I whispered with a chuckle. “I think I’m really lucky to have met you.”

          “I think I’m the lucky one,” Jinyoung responded. “Thank you for coming into my life.”

          A smile creeped up on my face and I couldn’t hold back anymore. I practically tackled him in a hug again. And before I realized anything, the tears started flowing. They weren’t sad tears, though, they were definitely happy tears. Tears that signified that I was happy to be alive, that I was happy to have found someone who appreciated me, happy to have found Jinyoung, and happy that I fell in love with him.

          I pulled away from the hug and met eyes with Jinyoung. So many emotions enveloped me in that moment, but the greatest one of them all was that I was simply happy to be alive and to be with him at that moment. I gave Jinyoung another kiss and hug before whispering in his ear, “I should thank you for coming into my life, Jung Jinyoung. I love you.”