EPHEMERAL
» ♡ «
lasting for a very short time

The sun rises above the horizon, casting long shadows along the ground from the trees lining the lake as Minho wakes up. His head is foggy and hazy with sleep, and to be honest, he wants nothing more than to doze off again. To curl back into the warm embrace of unconsciousness that threatens to consume him with every passing second.

Jisung is asleep against his chest, his hair tickling against Minho's cheek as he rouses from his slumber.

Minho groans and cracks his neck to rid himself of the crick in his neck, yawning loudly as he sits up and stretches his arms out in front of him.

Jisung's headphones fly off his head and clatter to the ground. The song had stopped playing a while ago, anyway. Jisung's phone probably died overnight.

"Rise 'n shine, sleeping beauty," Minho jokes as he turns to face Jisung. "You—"

The sight that greets him makes Minho freeze in place.

Jisung lays beside him on the grass; mouth slackened open, skin pale and sallow, eyes clouded and staring off into nothingness.

No, this can't be happening.

No.

No.

Nonononononono.

"Jisung? Hey, Jisung," Minho murmurs, nudging his shoulder gently.

He gets no response from Jisung, only the sound of heavy, labored breathing filling his ears as he nudges the boy once again with more urgency this time.

"Jisung, come on," Minho pleads, shaking him harder this time as tears begin welling up behind his eyes. "D–Don't— fuck— Don't do this to me!"

Minho cups Jisung's face in his hands and strokes his thumb along the boy's cheek, brushing away some of the stray tears that have begun trickling down his face in rivulets and pattering onto Jisung's face. He presses his fingers against the boy's neck to search for a pulse, but all he feels is an unnatural chill under his touch and an unnerving stillness that settles within his bones.

"Wake up," Minho chokes out between sobs, gripping onto Jisung's shoulders tightly. "Please."

He shakes Jisung once more, harder this time, as if there was still life left within him that would cause him to stir from his slumber. But he remains as lifeless as before; a puppet with cut strings, abandoned and forgotten.

Minho collapses back against the ground, pulling Jisung close to him and burying his face into the boy's neck. He cries uncontrollably as the sun begins rising in the distance, casting its rays onto the lake and bathing everything around them in a warm glow.

It created a devastating balance: Minho was warm and desperately trying to feed that warmth into Jisung. Jisung, who was so, so cold.

The tears fall fast and hot against Minho's cheeks, and all he can do is sob uncontrollably into Jisung's shirt as he clings onto him desperately.

It takes Minho a good five minutes before he's able to collect himself enough to call for help — stumbling inside the hospital in a half-delirious state of panic and yelling for someone, anyone, to "please help [him]!". But, when he returns outside, the paramedics are already loading Jisung's body into an ambulance truck while a nurse attends to a hysterical Minho.

"He— He was fine last night," Minho weeps, as another nurse wraps a blanket around him and guides him to sit down on a bench. "I–I don't understand."

The nurse makes an expression that Minho can only interpret as pity as she kneels down to meet him eye-level. She places her hand over his and rubs it comfortingly.

"I'm very sorry," she says softly, her eyes downcast and filled with sympathy. "It is never easy to deal with the death of a friend."

Minho doesn't know how long he spends crying on that bench, clutching onto the nurse's hand as if she were a lifeline keeping him from drowning in a sea of grief and despair. All he knows is that when the tears finally subside and his cries die down into hiccups and sniffles, his chest feels empty and hollow like an abandoned shipwreck lying at the bottom of the ocean floor.

He can only stare blankly at the lake; watching the sun glisten off of its surface and the water rippling peacefully in the gentle breeze as if nothing had happened. The birds chirp overhead and butterflies flit through the air carelessly; everything about nature seems so beautiful and picturesque, and yet, it all feels so wrong.

The world is so cruel — beautifully so. And perhaps this is what Minho hates most about it: how life goes on, oblivious to the suffering of those left behind to pick up the pieces of a life lost too soon. How the universe has the power to decide that Minho deserved cancer, or deserved to be robbed of a person he cared for before he could properly love him.

He wanted to; he wanted to painfully bad; that is, love Jisung. Now, it's no longer possible.

Due to Minho's inconsolable mental state, his mother offered to come by and finish packing up his belongings in preparation for life beyond Star Lost.

(Or, as Minho would regard it, a life of eternal mourning of the ephemeral: of what was there but was so fleeting that it never had the opportunity to be.)

Nayoung and Taeha passed Minho by in the hallway, wheeling suitcases stuffed to the brim with their personal items. The two turn and regard Minho with melancholic smiles and gentle nods as they continue toward the entrance of the hospital. They leave with a nurse escorting them.

Fuck them. They never believed Jisung, anyway.

Now he's... he's... Minho doesn't want to think about it.

After a while, Minho's mother appeared with his bags fully packed with a face as solemn as the winter moon. Her eyebrows are knitted together in a mixture of sadness and guilt, her lip quivering as if she desperately wants to say something to console Minho but can't find the words, as she opens her mouth to speak but closes it again without uttering a single sound.

She approaches Minho with an envelope, tucks it into his lap, before turning away and heading towards the door, clutching onto the handles of Minho's bags tightly as she walks out of sight.

Minho can only stare at the envelope in disbelief, tears pricking at the corners of his eyes as he traces his fingers along the handwriting of his name written across the front of it. It is likely Jisung's handwriting, not that Minho had enough time with him to memorize it— and that did it, Minho's crying again.

He considers tossing it aside for a moment before he decides to open it instead, pulling out the neatly folded paper within and reading it over carefully.

He would want you to read it.

So, he does.

　　'Minho,

　　I hope this letter finds you well. If it does, then I'm probably already gone and it probably stings to read this. But, I beg of you, please read the full thing.

　　I want you to know that none of this is your fault. I knew that my condition was deteriorating rapidly these past few weeks. I knew that it was only a matter of time before my body gave up on me. I lied to you so that you could still enjoy your life, and selfishly, so I could vicariously share that joy through you. I lied to you, so that I could feel some semblance of normalcy in my life that up until meeting you, felt entirely abnormal.

　　I don't want you to feel too sad that I'm gone. I'm not. During this program, I have met, by far, one of the best people in my entire short existence. You are so wonderful, so perfect, in every way imaginable. So vibrant, beautiful, passionate, and above all, strong. Thank you for sharing your light with me. For making me feel happy again after what felt like forever. I don't think I ever truly appreciated the significance of happiness until I met you.

　　I'm sorry for lying to you about the severity of my condition, simply so I could attach myself to you and manipulate you into being happy. So I could revel in your happiness and pretend, for a moment, that it didn't hurt to move. So that I could pretend that your happiness was my own.

　　I'm sorry for confessing to you, and for kissing you, when I knew myself that it couldn't be anything greater than that. But, I still felt as though it was something I needed to do before I left this Earth, so that I wouldn't have any regrets. I am so selfish, that I felt I could have never gone without telling you how I felt about you.

　　I will be forever grateful for you, Minho. I'm sorry for being the selfish fucker that broke your heart.

　　I know you will get better. I believe in you. I wish that I could live long enough to see you recover. I wish that I could live long enough to see you dance again. I wish that I could live long enough to see you become a singer as you so dreamed once.

　　Unfortunately, fate had different plans for us. But I'm glad that we were able to meet at all. I wish I could have loved you the way I wanted to.

　　Sincerely,
　　Jisung :)'

With that, Minho is alone once again. Alone with a letter and an emptiness that only Jisung had been able to fill.

He wonders how long he will go on with this gaping hole in his chest; how many times he'll cry himself to sleep and wake up alone; how many days will go by where all he can think about is Jisung's laugh or the way his eyes would form crescents when he smiled or how bright his eyes looked when he talked about music and how badly he just wants to hold him in his arms one last time and—

Minho sobs quietly to himself as he clutches the letter in his hands — pressing it against his chest and wishing more than anything that this was all just a terrible nightmare.

That Jisung was still here with him, smiling and laughing and making him feel alive again after years of being on the cusp of death.

A few weeks pass before Minho becomes comfortable eating with his mother again, as opposed to the depressing isolation of his bedroom.

"So, how was your day?" his mother asks during dinner. She uses her chopsticks to pluck up a piece of daikon radish and holds it in front of Minho's mouth. "Anything new?"

Minho does not know how to reply; he was too preoccupied wallowing in self-pity to notice anything of note.

"No," he murmurs weakly, opening his mouth to allow his mother to feed him. "Same old."

Minho's mother doesn't reply for a while, seemingly preoccupied with chewing on the same piece of daikon that she offered Minho, as Minho had barely taken a full bite. He briefly wonders what she thinks of Minho; the child she brought into the world only for him to become an ugly burden as he continues to be stricken with an incurable illness.

The words ring out in the silence between them before his mother finally musters up a response:

"Minho... You haven't really been talking much recently," his mother remarks cautiously. She pushes aside her bowl of rice to sit beside Minho and give him her undivided attention. "I know things are tough for you right now, but I want you to know that I'm always here to listen if you need me."

Minho stays silent, picking at his food with disinterest and allowing his bangs to fall over his eyes so that he can avoid making eye contact.

Minho's mother sighs softly before adding, "I just want to help you get through this...it's not easy, I know."

"My friend died," Minho grumbles, scooting away from his mother. "Sorry, I don't want to talk about things that don't really matter."

A fragile silence follows his admission, in which both parties sit stiffly at the dining table with no knowledge of how to continue the conversation.

Then:

"He wouldn't want you to be like this," she tries, curving a palm on Minho's shoulder. "No one wants you to be like this."

He wouldn't, but he's not here, so he doesn't get to dictate what he 'wants' from me.

Minho shrugs away his mother's touch and clenches his jaw. "I don't care," he mutters bitterly, refusing to meet her gaze. "I'm tired. I'm going to bed."

He rises from his seat at the dining table, ignoring his mother's protests, and leaves the room without another word.

Aside from spending a considerable amount of time in bed feeling sorry for himself, Minho finds solace in watching the sun set on the horizon from his bedroom window.

He watches as the sky gradually fades from a brilliant orange-pink hue to a deep, dark blue — like spilled ink bleeding into parchment — and as the stars begin to peek through the clouds that hang low overhead.

It reminds him of the pastel pink skies during sunset that he once spent with Jisung, where the first spark of electricity came between them.

Miss Soo calls for everyone to gather around, and Jisung hops to his feet eagerly. He stretches his hand out to help Minho up, to which Minho grumbles in response, but accepts nonetheless. He grabs hold of Jisung's hand, and with a sharp tug, Minho is hauled to his feet. His body lurches forward, and he stumbles into Jisung's chest.

"S–Sorry," Jisung says with a nervous chuckle. His hands land on Minho's shoulders. "Sorry, I didn't realize you'd fall."

Minho clears his throat and pushes off of Jisung, mumbling, "'S fine," before heading up toward the gathering group.

(He doesn't see Jisung hesitate, but eventually catch up with a few large strides.)

(However, Minho does notice the way Jisung's hand grazes his own — the way Jisung's pinky finger brushes his, and how their knuckles bump together, but only once — before both retreat their hands into their respective pockets.)

Before the world came crashing down and it all became a distant memory, overshadowed by the looming darkness of Jisung's death — and how much Minho wishes he could go back to that time when everything seemed so simple and uncomplicated.

The film draws to a close with the lovers running through a field of grass and flowers. They embrace, kiss, and profess their eternal love to one another as the credits roll. The screen is overtaken by the words, "The End," and a few more lines of dialogue.

Minho turns to Jisung to comment about the poor storytelling, but the boy's eyes are glassy, and his lips are pressed tightly together.

"Jisung, are you—"

"No." Jisung quickly wipes his face with the back of his sleeve and sniffs.

"But you're crying."

"Am not."

"Yes, you are."

"Am not!" Jisung's voice cracks. He huffs and stands up. "I'm going to bed. Good night."

It was hard to believe, but there were times where Minho could almost pretend that everything was fine — that he was perfectly healthy and that he had a normal life where he could be happy without having to worry about dying from cancer or whether or not he would see another day.

There were times where he regarded Jisung in a similar manner, too.

Minho hands the cup back to Jisung and watches as Jisung happily digs in without hesitation. He eats with fervor; vigorously scraping the sides of the cup, leaving behind nothing more than a chocolatey mess. A laugh bubbles out from Minho's throat before he even realizes it.

Jisung looks up at Minho with mild confusion etched across his features.

"What?"

"You're messy," Minho points out, reaching over to wipe away the smudge of ice cream dashed across the corner of Jisung's mouth. "There."

Jisung blinks at Minho. Once. Twice. Then, his cheeks are alight with a shade of bubblegum pink (that Minho thinks contrasts beautifully with the soft green of the grassy field behind them.) He diverts his gaze downwards into the cloying melted ice cream that is puddled at the bottom of the cup.

Minho retracts his hand, swallowing down the burning heat that creeps up his neck.

"Thanks," Jisung mumbles softly, keeping his head ducked low.

But now, as he stares out into the vast expanse of sky, all he can think about is Jisung's comforting presence by his side and how it's now gone forever.

"I–I mean, I don't mean to screw everything up," Jisung stammers. "I just wanted you to know that before I left. So I wouldn't have any regrets. I'm—"

"Jisung." Minho interrupts. He gulps.

Jisung raises a timid eyebrow at Minho. He runs his hand through his hair anxiously. "Y-Yeah?"

"Shut up."

Minho glances back up at Jisung through thick lashes before pressing his lips against the latter's in a gentle kiss. It's like jumping off the cliff — only, there is no long, terrible fall; rather, he's suspended in the air, held up by the wings of an angel. His angel. Jisung, whose eyes widen in surprise before fluttering closed as he leans into the kiss, mouth melting against Minho's.

It's as if Minho is floating in space; untethered to reality and gliding through a sea of stars with his fingers intertwined with Jisung's.

Minho only hopes that Jisung can feel this too — how perfect this feels and how right it is, like two puzzle pieces falling perfectly together with no space left between them. Jisung's lips are so soft and warm against his own; it sends sparks flying through his body and ignites fireworks inside his chest that make his heart soar with happiness.

It hurts so bad, but it's all Minho can think about. His mind keeps replaying memories of the two of them laughing and joking around together over and over again in his head; every single little moment that they shared together becomes embedded within his soul so deeply that he knows he'll never be able to let go of it even if he wants to.

The ache in Minho's chest intensifies as he pictures Jisung's smiling face in front of him — soft cheeks dusted pink with faint moles dotting his face — and feels tears begin to well up behind his eyelids again.

He places his hand against the cool glass window pane and whispers quietly under his breath, "I miss you already."

I wanted to love you, Jisung.

Why couldn't "fate" have understood that?

With Jisung's rainbow-sticker-encumbered headphones fastened over his ears, Minho decides to go for a walk, somewhere in the middle of the night.

He slides on a pair of loose sweatpants over his boxers and pulls on an oversized hoodie to stave off the chilly nighttime air before stepping outside. He finds himself wandering aimlessly around the neighborhood without any real destination in mind — simply wanting to get out of his suffocating room that was beginning to feel more and more like a prison with every passing second.

The streets are deserted at this time of night; save for the occasional car driving by or stray cat darting across the road. But even those were sparse occurrences as most people tended to stay indoors at such a late hour.

It means that the only real life forms existing in a constant state are the stars that twinkle brightly in the sky overhead — tiny specks of light shining through a canopy of darkness.

Minho's eyes narrow as he observes the stars that provide some comfort in this lonely abyss. One of them twinkles irregularly, slightly brighter than the others, but not enough to divert its path. It flies by solitary. Its purpose, unknown. Its destination, unclear. Just a tiny dot among millions of others in the dark sky.

The more Minho stares at the solitary star, the more it reminds him of Jisung. Of how beautiful he was; how bright and full of life he was despite his deteriorating health; of how he was the brightest star in the fucking universe, and how Minho was a fool for taking him for granted.

Jisung, who now exists only as a ghost in Minho's memories.

Jisung, who no longer has a physical presence on Earth anymore, defined exclusively by his belongings left behind.

Jisung, who is dead and gone forever because Minho was too late.

Jisung, who is...the star?

Minho draws closer to the star; entranced by its light. As if a mere shadow of its radiance will sustain him. It's then that its light explodes into something unordinary: a compilation of illuminated fractals that spell out 'It's really me.'

Minho reaches out to the star as if he can touch it from where he stands on the ground, and laughs to himself when he realizes how ridiculous he must look right now.

I must be going really crazy right now.

'You're not.'

"W–What?"

The star glows brighter than before, as if confirming that it is, indeed, speaking to Minho.

"H–How is this happening?"

'I have no clue. No one actually knows what you become when you die.'

Minho snaps his fingers rapidly in an attempt to gain awareness and chase away whatever hallucination this may be — a futile attempt to convince himself that this is all in his head, but upon failing to dispel this fantasy (whatever it may be), he realizes that this was not a mere hallucination. That this really is Jisung, communicating with him through a fucking star.

It is painful, Minho must admit, that the only way he can speak to Jisung now is through this strange phenomenon. Through an anomaly in the cosmos.

(Yet, it is also oddly comforting to know that Jisung is still out there somewhere and that he isn't truly gone forever.)

Minho chokes back a sob and bites down on his lower lip, blinking away the tears that are beginning to form in the corners of his eyes.

'I don't know how long this will last.'

'So, I want you to promise me something.'

Anything, I swear it. "A–Anything," Minho breathes.

Minho waits with bated breath for Jisung's words, his fingers trembling as he clenches his fists tightly by his side and stares up at the star.

The star has transformed into a swirling vortex of color and light that reflects off of Minho's eyes like a kaleidoscope — causing him to have to squint and shield his vision from the overwhelming brightness. It blinks rapidly before expelling a burst of colors akin to fireworks and compiles into a sequence of words:

'Please, get better. Then, live your life to the fullest, because life is ephemeral. Cherish it while you still can.'

'And when you do, I want you to find someone that makes you feel as special as you made me feel.'

The star spins wildly in place before emitting another flurry of colors; however, this time, a short message:

'Don't give up. For me, please.'

Minho watches as the star fades in brightness until it is nothing more than a distant twinkle in the sky, signaling to him that the time spent conversing with Jisung has come to an end.

He feels a hot tear slip down his cheek as he raises a trembling pinky to the sky.

"For you, I promise."

END.

Author's Note.

Thank you for reading Chapter Nine! This was initially supposed to be the Epilogue, but it ended up being way too long. I hope the ending wasn't too confusing! This is my first time writing a Magical Realism piece.

Again, thank you for reading my first ever finished story!

Yes, it's pretty short (~32k), but I'm still very proud of her! With all the angst that I write, I have never cried before while writing, not until this story.

It hits very close to home to me as someone who has had numerous family members pass away from cancer. I hope that people who have had loved ones pass away, for whatever reason, can relate to the abruptness of it all.

In 'Ephemeral', we don't see Jisung communicating the reality of his condition with Minho in a way that Minho understood that Jisung would be dying soon. Minho is with Jisung until his final, dying breath, but not because he was aware of Jisung's impending death.

I believe that this is a common reality for loved ones who are coping with potentially "abandoning" the people they care about due to variables that are not within their control. To avoid becoming a burden, or by further upsetting their loved ones, sometimes people will play off the depressing reality of their situation.

Q: What are your thoughts on 'Ephemeral' as a whole? Did you enjoy the book?

Leave comments 💬 and votes ⭐️ if you enjoyed!

♥ – Lia