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

Everything was a complete blur that night.

The sight of Jimin fainting right before my eyes and my screams for help still felt unreal. It still felt like I was dreaming and I was watching from far away as the nurses and the resident doctor came in to aid him. I barely remembered how I got back into my room, as the shock and the exhaustion from my late-night trip had also gotten me attached to a ventilator system by the end of all that drama so I could breathe easier. I almost didn't remember having an attack, even if it felt like my whole chest was crushed by a loaded truck when I failed to breathe.

When I woke up two days after, as I found myself with a breathing mask covering my face, lying on the bed inside the ICU instead of my regular room, and finding my pissed off brother standing on the side of my bed, I knew that none of it was a dream.

"________," Hoseok quickly rushed to my side when I tried to move and reaching up to pull the mask away. A few grunts escaped me when I tried to speak. "______, don't!"

I stopped, looking at him with wide eyes. "What the hell were you thinking?" he began chastising me, his voice breaking down the more he spoke. "You should have known better than making a whole trip down the halls with your condition and without any observation. What were you trying to do?"

My hand fell to my side.

I wanted to ask him about what had happened. I wanted to ask about Jimin and how they had found me. But mostly, as I looked into his red-rimmed eyes, I wanted to apologise for making him worried. He had been swamped with cases to deal with in his office and for him to leave his work for me had only meant that things had gotten serious.

Hoseok reached for my hand and gripped tightly. "Don't you ever do that to me again. You hear me?" I could not say anything with the mask on, so I did the next best thing and nodded my head. I had to shut my eyes when the small movement made my head spin.

"I know you're worried about Jimin," he added, surprising me when he brought him up before I could say anything. "But for now, let's focus on you first. Take a good rest and recover so we can find out what happened, okay?"

Blinking away the tears in my eyes, I nodded my head once again. My head spun, and this time, I no longer fought it as I fell back to my long sleep.

It did not take only hours for me to wake up and recover as if nothing had happened, but days. I could not even process what day it was when they replaced my breathing mask with a smaller tube and cut me off from half of the machines they had activated since the night I was placed in the intensive care unit. All I knew was that I felt like a new person after having the longest sleep in my life, and even better when I found Jimin waiting next to me when I woke up.

I was still in the ICU. But that was not the only thing I noticed.

The curtain next to my bed was wide open, while the bed behind it was empty. Jimin was sitting between me and that bed, and attached to him were cables, linking him to the machines from that corner of the room.

He had been placed right beside me the whole time.

How long had he been there? How long had he known that we were side by side this entire time?

And how long had he been awake?

The question ran like waves inside my head but no words came out. All I did was lay still on my bed, looking at his face as if he would disappear anytime I blinked my eyes. I did blink. He did not fade away like some imaginary figure appearing on my line of sight. Instead, he smiled and reached out for my hand.

His skin was ghostly pale and he looked terribly exhausted. But as I looked down on our entwined hands, I noticed that I was nearly just as pale as he was, as if the crimson shade of blood had left my skin while I was out.

"Hey," he whispered, pulling my eyes back to him.

"Hey," I answered with croaked voice, and he instantly reached out to help me drink. That was when I noticed something else. His hand was shaking as he held out the glass and straw for me to take.

"Good to see you looking better."

"I was worried about you."

Both of us spoke at the same time and we both chuckled. "Have you been watching me sleep?" I asked him, smiling when shades of pink returned to his cheeks.

"You know how much I love watching you sleep."

I was still too weak to move around, but it did not stop me from resting sideways so I could take a better look at him. His words hit me hard inside my chest and I realised how much I missed him. Being apart from him was painful. More painful than I had ever thought it would be. And the thought of me losing him—

"I saw you that night," I whispered when things began to come back. When I remembered what I saw. "Jimin—all that blood, what—" I choked out, while he tried to avoid looking into my eyes. "What is going on? Is there something you're not telling me?"

"_________," he started, only to stop himself and close his eyes.

"It wasn't the first time I saw you coughing blood," I said, the words came tumbling out of my lips when I suddenly remembered the night he fell after fighting with Jungkook. When I remembered the blood spilling out of his lips and how I kept finding bloody tissues once or twice when he was not looking. "It wasn't just because of Jungkook's attack, was it?"

"No, it wasn't. But it had gotten worse after I got hit that night," he finally admitted with remorse filling his words.

"What are you not telling me?" I asked him. Fear lacing my words.

I knew I would never like what he was going to say. I hated it even more to think that he couldn't be honest with me. That he had been hiding something from me and I had failed to notice.

"I've told you everything that has been going on with me. You could have shared these things with me, Jimin. Or—is there any reason why you feel like you can't talk to me about it?

"No, it's not that," he quickly explained. When I looked up to his face, there was some kind of guilt appearing in his gaze. "It's just that—there is something that I haven't been able to tell you, because I just wanted to be with you without anything shadowing us and you would chastise me for pushing myself too hard. And I can't let you deal with my problem when you have so much to deal with."

"What is it?"

"My condition has been getting worse for a while now," he sighed. His shoulders sagging in defeat as he finally began to spill out everything he had kept to himself. "______, while you were out, I had my final test run."

He tightened his grip on my hand and stared deeply into my eyes. There were no words spoken, yet the silence was enough to let me know that it was bad. Really bad. The way his jaw twitched and his eyes began to glisten with remorseful tears said it all.

"No," I said to him, wishing that I could shut my ears so I would not hear anything. Shaking my head, I begged and hoped that he would not be saying things I knew he was trying to say, things I refused to accept. "Don't say it—"

Jimin took both my hands in his when I began pulling away, refusing to believe that this was happening. "There is nothing they could do. It has spread too much, and—"

"No!" I leapt from the bed despite the pain in my body and wrapped my arms around him, holding him close. I always had this feeling that he was disappearing and that had been the reason why I had always kept him close, why I had always had the urge to touch him, to hold him, and now he was telling me that he really was going to disappear from my life, just when I finally began to love again. When I began to love him.

"I can't lose you, Jimin. Tell me you're not going to leave me."

He wrapped his arms around me, holding me tighter against his chest while I felt his cheek pressing into my thinning hair. I could feel his soft breath falling on my neck, but he said nothing. He made no promises, knowing that he had no idea whether or not he would be able to fulfil them.

All he ever did was hold me, letting me feel his racing heartbeat to let me know that he was real, that he was still there at that moment to be with me and that he was holding to every bit of hope that was left for us.

When the next day arrived and the visiting hours were up, Jungkook finally came to see me.

I was still in the ICU for my final observation and it surprised me to see him being allowed inside, until I finally remembered—that he was still my husband.

The memory of our last conversation still left a bitter taste on my tongue and a tight feeling inside my chest. That was why I have failed to acknowledge the distraught look he carried, nor the dark bags under his eyes that would have let me know that he had not been taking care of himself like he should have been.

"It took you long enough to come out of your hiding and come back," I said, keeping my voice steady. After meeting my brother-in-law, I knew that we needed to properly talk without fighting, without getting too emotional that we ended up hurting each other instead of getting all the answers we needed. The last thing I needed was getting all riled up and getting worse because of it when all I wanted was to get out of here.

Yet when he gave me no answers and had only stared at me with a longing gaze, I was reminded of all those times in the past when he would run away when we had a problem and how I would end up finding out where—or who—he was running to, and I just couldn't help myself.

"Why did you come back, Jungkook?" I asked him, still keeping my voice calm even when my chest felt constricted. There was no denying that the pull between us was still there, though not as strong as how it used to be. But the hurt he caused me was also present, just as strongly as how it had always been. "Has the woman you chose as your distraction this time bore you to death already? Have you gotten enough of her that you sought for me again?"

My accusation caught him off guard that he visibly winced. I almost regretted ever saying something when the look of hurt and disappointment came out strongly in his eyes.

"There was no woman. I just—needed some time, and some space, to think clearly. Since I, obviously, can't do that whenever I am near you. Not when it comes to losing you," he finally said, stuttering a bit and had his voice cracking. "They called me when you got into ICU, the night you fainted. I tried to come here as fast as I could."

I opened my mouth to speak. But he stopped me. His hands reached out to me, only to stop at the edge of the bed.

"But that's not the only reason why I'm here," he told me, keeping his eyes on me and his hands clutched on top of the cold sheets. "I'm here to make it right. I'm here to say that I'm sorry for everything I've put you through and for everything I said the last time we spoke. I came here to ask for your forgiveness. But most of all, to have your permission for me to stay."

My jaw almost dropped to the floor at what he had just said to me.

"Are you serious?" I scoffed, though he gave me nothing, not even a change of expression. In fact, he gave me a look which said that he was nervous yet still determined to get what he wanted.

"Why are you doing this, Jungkook?" I asked him, genuinely wondering if he really was being such a hard-ass about letting me go. "Why are you only fighting now? There is nothing left here, Jungkook. I am nothing but a shell of the person you loved and married."

When he said nothing, I kept on talking, letting all the words I had wanted to say since the day we last argued to come out so he could hear me out. "You have broken me. You left me broken into pieces again, and again, and left me behind to fix it on my own. So I kept fixing, and fixing, until there was nothing left to fix and I don't even know who I was anymore other than a pile of dust you have left rotting on the ground."

My tears fell as I spoke, but I held myself steady. I could see the hurt in his eyes which mirrored mine, regret coming out strongly as he did nothing but listen.

"The last time we talked, you asked me if I had chosen him, why I had chosen Jimin over you," I said, my voice coming out as a whisper while his jaw twitched with emotions. "I've chosen to be with him because he didn't come into my life to patch my broken pieces. He came into my life when he was just as broken as I was and since then he has been the one bringing me back to life. To love. So if you're doing—whatever it is you are plotting to do to get me back, then the answer is no, Jungkook. There is no way for me to come back, because there is nothing left of my old self that had once loved you. That part of me is gone."

Speaking up like that was exhausting that I wanted nothing more than to just slump back into the bed and to give in to sleep once more. But I braced myself, ready to face any argument that may come from him, knowing that he would never back down so easily.

But he surprised me once again when he released a deep sigh and his shoulder fell in defeat. Then I watched how his hands loosened up before he spoke.

"I know that. And you're right. There is nothing for us to come back to," he said, clenching his jaw as if those words were too painful to speak of. "But that doesn't stop me from loving you and wanting to make things right for you."

"Jungkook—"

Without giving me any chance to argue, he reached down to his briefcase and pulled out a folder. The familiar-looking folder which I had received from Hoseok and left for him to sign.

"That's—that's what I've been doing while I was away," he told me as he handed the folder gently into my hands.

His hands were shaking and so did his breath when he began to explain.

"I have signed the papers and had the court finalise our divorce. I have also arranged everything to make it easier for you in the future. I've had arranged for our house to be sold so you can have enough funds for your treatments and enough savings so you could—" he choked out a sob and stopped to take a deep breath, "—so you could find a place to live in and move on. I wanted to leave the house for you, but I know it wouldn't be right if you want a fresh start."

His lips twitched and I could tell what he was meaning to say but couldn't. He would never dare to say his name, but at least he was beginning to accept the fact that we could no longer be.

Jungkook looked into my eyes when he continued to speak, the determined look in his eyes returning to him with every word he said.

"I've let you down and made you feel lonely even when we were together. I have given you too much pain and all the burden to fight for both of us while I gave up on us so easily, while I was acting like a coward and would run away each time trouble gets in the way. I'm going to change that and make up for all of my mistakes."

I was lost for words. This turn of event was completely unexpected. I was ready to fight when I had thought he would fight back harder. But I was wrong.

Then I was kept in more silence when he kept talking, finally letting me know what he really wanted from me.

"In exchange for—everything, I won't be greedy to ask for more, only for your forgiveness and that you would let me be here to support you," he said to me without ever looking away. The pain in his eyes was palpable and I could tell how hard it was for him to tell me all of this. But I was not ready to hear what he asked of me next.

"Even if I can't have you in my life as my wife, at least let me be here for you. Allow me to stay by your side. As a friend."