—First life. St. Vincent's Hospital, year 2027—

It was happening again.

The highs and lows of my life just kept on coming to me like strong waves taking over the ocean.

Just when I felt things were going great, when I felt hopeful enough to make future plans, things instantly fell short to make sure it would never happen.

I was supposed to be getting better.

I was supposed to be planning my life ahead, of trying to find a place for both Jimin and me to try and continue to live like regular people. We were supposed to be on our way to find houses with big yards and white picket fences for both of us, looking through pictures of dogs or cats in the animal shelters for us to adopt.

Instead, here I was, waking up with more pain. At the end of the week, instead of feeling better and proving to the doctor that I would be able to live independently, I had only gotten worse, much worse, and I finally woke up at my lowest point one morning that I dreaded ever waking up at all.

"Tell me how you're feeling," Kara asked me when she found me curling on the bed. With tears flowing out as my body temperature was high with a fever.

"I'm fine," I whispered, closing my eyes when the lies burned my tongue. Though I knew it was not the words I said which was hurting me. It was my own body, falling apart to the demon that had been eating me up inside.

"The doctor said he will come back with the test results and update us about what is going on," Kara said as she passed the lunch tray. I could tell how hard she was trying to stay calm, but her own hands betrayed her when they kept shaking while she was preparing for my meal. "In the meantime, try to eat a little."

"I can't," I told her, closing my eyes when talking alone felt too painful for me to do.

I tried to wet my lips, but it would do nothing to lessen the dryness and the patches on my drying lips. I tried putting on chapsticks and had even tried to put on the various types of lip balms that Kara had bought me. Nothing. I also had blisters inside my mouth which made it hard for me to eat anything.

"I remember when your mother had that too. I think soft pudding and soft ice cream helped her a lot back then. That's why I figured I should get some for you so you could at least have some snacks," Kara said as she pulled a few snacks out of the grocery bag that she had brought with her today.

My stomach was churning with both nausea and hunger, but I snatched the pudding anyway and forced myself to eat.

"Well?"

Swallowing slowly, I nodded timidly. "As long as I don't have to chew, I might be okay," I said with relief as I gobbled a few scoops of the pudding without a problem, though only seconds after the final word was out, I instantly winced in pain.

"The doctor better be here quick before I drag him down here myself," Kara hissed, clenching her hands before she helped me open another container of the sweet pudding she bought me while I kept quiet.

We were scheduled to see the doctor today, but not for the reason of finding out what was wrong with me. We were supposed to talk about our plans for getting me out of here. After I had told Kara about what Jimin and I had planned, she had taken it upon herself to meet the doctor and requested that he would consider it, while also offered to take up the role as my guardian and caretaker if the hospital was willing to approve my release and make me take all the treatments as an outpatient like I used to.

With what had been going on since I woke up this morning, I already knew that we would be talking about all the different things and that I would not be getting all the answers I wanted.

Two containers of soft pudding and a small cup-sized of soft ice cream later, a nurse in her blue scrub came into the room and prepared me to take a trip downstairs. There was nothing much she could say when I asked her about it, only that the doctor needed me to take a quick visit down the lab before meeting him, and that he had something urgent to say to me after I had some blood work done.

All the way down to the doctors' lobby with the nurse and Kara at my side, I had instantly felt it.

The dream of having a normal life shattering the closer I was to meet Dr. Kim. No more hopes for having a house with a beautiful white picket fence around it, no more hopes of building a peaceful life with Jimin.

I was sure of it even without the doctors confirming it for me beforehand when I could already feel it. After continuous chemotherapy and radiation, the strength and positive outcome that I was feeling slowly became null. I was feeling the pain again, I had no progress against the increasing pain and drowsiness I was feeling, and after a few days of finally being able to move freely on my own without anyone else's assistance, I was suddenly becoming immobilised.

Pretty sure it was for that reason Dr. Kim had invited me to visit him in his office instead of having him come to my room as usual. There had been many changes happening already to make me feel cautious and tense. Like how today's drug treatment was cancelled and how the schedule for my radiation—which was supposed to happen right before I was being released—was moved to an undefined future date.

The minute I sat right across from the doctor right in front of his desk, I already knew that he had come here bearing unpleasant news before he even said anything.

I could tell by the way he entered the room without even looking my way, and also from the quick exchange of glance he made with Kara as he was taking his seat behind his desk. And then there was the sigh which escaped his lips when he looked down on his notes. The deep sigh which he would always make each time he knew he was about to disappoint someone with what he was about to say. He even wore the grim look on his face, one which had his brows furrowing so deeply it made him look extremely tired and older than he actually was.

At least he had his white hospital coat disposed of before he sat down, giving me a leeway to treat him like a friend. Just the way he wanted me to.

Except that he had yet to raise his face to look at me. He still had his eyes down as he flipped through the folder on his desk, my full name imprinted on its front cover and right on the top of the papers which looked similar to my previous test results.

"Lay it on me, Doc. What's the verdict?"

Dr. Kim lifted his face and smiled. "It's Seokjin, remember? I'm off-duty the minute that coat is off," he said, pointing at the coat hanged right at his door with his thumb as he winked playfully. For a moment there, the tension in the room lessened with his cheekiness. Only briefly, and then it fell back in place when his cheeky smile turned into his signature regretful one.

His silence made me wonder if he was planning to take it easy, going on a round route of giving me nice words and some positive news to distract me from the negative ones. But he knew me well enough at this point to know that it would never work on me. Enough to know that I would prefer for him to be honest instead of giving me false hopes.

"Alright—" he started, sighing once more as he straightened himself on his seat, bracing himself for what he was about to say. "I know that I had promised to keep you updated with your progress and see if we could get you out of here. You know how much I hate to do this, but I'm afraid I have some bad news."

Raising my brows, I could only guess what this meeting was all about and what the doctor was trying to tell me. "You're denying my request of getting released from the hospital."

"I'm so sorry about this, and it's not that the hospital is completely denying to let you continue as an outpatient, which I believe you could, or that I don't trust you to nurse ______," he said, glancing at Kara on this part before he turned back to look at me. "I do trust your family to keep an eye on you while you are out there. It's just that this is going to have to wait."

"How so?"

"A new progress has occurred after our last test and with your current condition, it seems impossible to let you go before giving you another treatment."

"Just one treatment?" I asked him while trying to figure out what he might be planning for me.

Seokjin nodded solemnly. "Just as predicted, the cancer has stopped responding to your treatments. The chemo did well at first, and your body reacted the way it should until it didn't, even with the new drug we have added in the mix. The cancer seems to be fighting back, and we're beginning to worry that the radiation will not be able to keep up with how fast it is growing."

Kara reached for my hand and clenched tightly. "So, what's our option?" she asked the doctor. Her presence comforted me, but I could not deny that I was wishing to have my brother here with me to hear this news with us instead of having to wait until I could break it down to him later.

"Your first option would be to go through radiation if only we could get it sooner than we had it planned. The X-ray photos we took from you after the last radiation showed great results, but we can't do it simultaneously, and the pain you have been experiencing only indicates that the mass seems to keep on growing during the spare time we have between treatments. So we've been talking about placing you in surgery," he said, as if he had it all figured out.

"After looking through your family history and your mother's case, we have found that you share the same T-cells as your mother, and it seems that the cancer is building up around it the same way it did with your mother. If I'm right, it will resume to progress the way it did with your mother. The only way I can give you clearance is if we go ahead with the surgery and see if we can take it out before it gets any worse. But—" Seokjin stopped for a moment, having quite a hard time to choose his words. "—with the size of the mass growth we have now and where it is situated, the risk would be too high."

Kara's grip on my hand tightened, and I could have never been more grateful to have her there so she could keep me grounded. The new information was making my head spin.

"Your body is still recovering from the vigorous chemotherapy treatments you have been put through so we're supposed to wait until you are ready to get you to another drug treatment or the upcoming radiation. But like I said, it's a race against time. The cancer is getting aggressive and if we don't move fast to remove it, it might progress further into the next level of its metastasis. It could either spread into a wider area, or—it would strike you at your fatal points."

I knew that he was trying to tell me everything there was to know about my disease. But I hated the fact that he sounded like he was trying to persuade me into agreeing and let him cut me open to get this thing out of my body. And I hated that he made it seem like I had no other option.

"How—how bad would the spreading be?" I heard Kara taking over the conversation while I was mulling over the new fact that I was still having a hard time processing.

Seokjin kept his eyes on me for a moment, like he knew I was having trouble making a decision. Then he looked at Kara, sounding calm and collected when he said, "Looking at where it is located now, the metastasis could head straight into the lungs, and there is always a risk of having it reaching the brain area."

Just like my mother, I suddenly wondered with a shudder as I recalled the day she fell into a coma when the mass inside her body progressed so rapidly, as if it had taken a turn overnight and bypassed her radiation when it began building around the soft tissues in her body. Her lungs taking the hardest blow before her brain seized to function.

"The only thing that I must warn you about is that through the surgery, the doctors tend to be aggressive upon removing this type of cancer."

A high-risk surgery. So that was the reason why he had chosen to have this talk in his private area, instead of in the open space of my room.

"What are my odds of getting through it completely intact?"

"40 to 60 percent of survival, give or take," he said, though it was clear to me that he was trying so hard not to make empty promises when he was not entirely sure about it.

"So basically, what you're saying is that I'll either die of this cancer or die in the hands of the people trying to save me?" I was practically shaking so hard after listening to everything he had to say and my heartbeat was racing so hard I could barely breathe.

How my voice came out so calm and steady at this point was beyond me.

"You could put it that way," he shrugged, though it was obvious that he hated having to tell me all of this. For not being able to give me something positive to hold on to. "But it would be no better than to wait until the chemotherapy and radiation could finally work against it. If you choose to remain with the therapy and medications you are currently in, we can still try to intensify or add the dose on the next radiation to help you heal slowly, use it to reduce the pain until we get through the next one. But we have no clue how much time the mass will stay dormant this time before it resumes its growth."

At this point, it really did seem like I had no other choice. It was either to take that risk so I could have a chance to have some extra time in life, or fall back and let fate decide what to do with my life.

I recalled having him offering me to have the radiation to cut down the nerves which allowed me to stop feeling any pain so I could get through the treatments more smoothly. But I had refused to do it long ago as it would be like deceiving myself and making me forget that I was going through this.

I could not decide. I felt so lost and afraid. Afraid of making the wrong choices when my own life, my own future, was at risk.

"If you were the one to make the choice, what would you say would be the better option for me to take?"

Seokjin kept his eyes on me when he spoke, as if he was trying to talk me down into giving in. "If it was up to me, then I say we remove it. It's a high risk, but we are on a race against time and we have to move quickly if we want to get a step ahead."

"Will you be alright on your own?"

Kara tightened her coat on while watching me closely. The nighttime had fallen and she had to return home.

She had a clearance to stay the night as my guardian, but she knew that I would want to spend some time with Jimin—even if she never knew how often Jimin would spend the night in my bed at night—while she would try to find a way to talk to my brother and update him with everything that we had just found out today.

"I'll be fine," I told her, forcing a smile so I could convince her the best I could. "Jimin would probably come to visit me before bedtime anyway to keep me company. Even if he's not coming, I'm tired enough to fall asleep anytime soon."

The lie felt bitter on my tongue, but I was glad that Kara never caught on to it.

"Okay, but keep your phone close and in hands reach so we can stay in contact. I'll be here before noon tomorrow," she said, before kissing my cheek one last time and walked out the door.

The room fell silent right after. It was not long until the nurses came in for the last round of the night and the lights were turned off, but I could not find sleep coming to me soon enough. Hours passed and my mind was still moving a mile a minute, pondering over the things that we had talked about earlier today.

The night continued to linger, and I began to notice that there was no sign of Jimin coming into my room.

I waited until an hour passed. Then another hour. Still no sign of him.

I had no idea what came over me. Perhaps the need to find someone to talk to had made me feel impatient and restless. Perhaps the stress was compelling me to step out of the room when it was suddenly starting to make me feel claustrophobic.

Though I could also say that I was probably just missing him so badly, since I have gotten used to sleeping in his arms.

Before I knew it, I was pushing myself off the bed. There was no infusion bag attached to me and no IV pole to hold me back, so I had thought I would have no problem moving on my own without help or a wheelchair. But it surely didn't take long for me to realise how wrong I was.

The pain began to build up when I was only halfway out on my journey. My breath was getting heavy and my chest was growing tight. I only told myself that I was doing okay and that it was only nerves getting to me for the reasons why I was out there making my way to him.

I hated to be the bearer of bad news, to crush all hopes of us living happily together and forgetting about our battles right here inside these walls. Yet I held on to hopes that perhaps facing the truth together would be able to help us to cope, to make us feel stronger against whatever coming in the way of our happiness.

That thought alone was the only thing that kept me going, no matter how badly my body was begging me to stop.

The hallways were dark and deserted at night. I could always hear it when the nurses or security guards were walking around the hall so I was half expecting to be found before I managed to get to him. But there was no one stopping me as I continued walking, holding onto the handrails attached to the walls as I made my way towards the other wing where Jimin's room is located.

It took me a long time to get there. Though it wasn't exactly an easy trip to go through either.

But after having my nightdress soaked with sweat, my back aching and my legs shaking as I kept holding myself up and forcing my way, my chest growing tight as I was running out of air even when I was taking my time and moving so slow from one hallway to another, I was finally standing right in front of Jimin's room.

The door was closed shut, so I had thought that he might have fallen asleep.

He was not supposed to be having his treatment yet, which was why I was not expecting to find him resting so early. But it did stop me from barging in, afraid that I might wake him up and intrude his much-needed rest.

Then I heard his voice, coughing so hard from inside the room. The coughs sounded wet and heavy, and unlike the sounds that I have heard him making when it happened to him before, so I couldn't wait any longer and gently pushed the door. Just as I stepped inside, calling his name softly, I saw him hunching over on the bed, still in his coughing fit.

His face was pale when he looked up to me, his eyes were red with tears. But it was the stain on his clothes and sheets which had me gasping and nearly stumble crying, because all I saw was blood, dripping from his lips and coming out on each cough escaping him.

"_______," Jimin choked out my name when he saw me, coughing out blood a few more times and gasping for breath, before he fell unconscious over the bed.

"Jimin!"