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“And you wonder how many billions of humans have survived this cycle of not exactly heartbreak, but tiny heart fractures. Hairline cracks that barely leak.”
Roman Elrich
*
*
*
She’s done with him, with this.
He thinks that’s what’s going on, when she sits him down on the couch one arbitrary Friday. She looks serious, and sad, and he swallows past the tightness in his throat to let her say her piece. He left her behind all those years ago, and she didn’t beg him to stay. He’ll grant her the same courtesy.
But that’s not what leaves her lips. He wishes it was.
“I'm sick,” she says tremulously. Her face crumples before she reels herself back in. “It’s canc—”
He stands up.
His heartbeat takes up residence in his ears. He’s underwater, or at the end of a very deep tunnel.
“Don't look like that,” he tells her. “You look like you’re going to tell me you're dying. You're not dying. People dont die from things like this anymore. There’s doctors. There’s…treatments, if not in Korea then the United States or somewhere else. I have enough money for that. It’s going to be fine. You’re going to be fine.”
He’s not looking at her. He’s just vomiting words while he stares at the Seoul skyline outside his window. He sees her reflection on the glass. She’s staring at the floor, her hands laid neatly over her thighs.
She’s giving him space. Time to process.
“You scared me. ” He turns around. “You shouldn't tell me things like that looking so…You’ll be fine.” He walks to her, and she offers him a small smile. He can feel himself being managed by her. “If you’re sick, you’ll get better. It’s nothing.”
He’s just talking. He’s just saying things. She doesn’t say anything, just lets him get it all out.
He walks to the kitchen, in need of doing something, but no matter where he looks his chest just feels tighter. He bought the new fridge two months ago, all thanks to her. She’s practically living here now and she saves her leftovers every time they order in. She cooks too much and saves the side dishes too. His last fridge was running out of space.
He turns around.
He squeezes the back of a chair. He realized, the first time he sat down to eat dinner with her, that he’d never used these damned chairs at all. His chest feels tight. He needs to sit down but he feels like he’s going to pass out if he so much as takes a step.
And then her arms wrap around his waist.
“Breathe,” she tells him. “They caught it early. It’s going to be okay.”
And then she’s the one talking, words he tries to keep track of.
Breast Cancer and stage two and they said it has a 90% survival rate . But all he hears is that there is a 10% chance she doesn't make it. All he can think about is that 10%.
His life was going in one direction and she changed it. He would've died that night he first saw her, but he heard her voice and got off the train and it saved him. That’s a one in a million chance. He was drinking himself to death and she asked him to worship her, that’s…what? One in a thousand? He put twenty years of drinking behind him, one in a hundred men can do that.
He’s been a lucky bastard ever since he crossed paths with her.
Every single thing has gone the way it wasn't supposed to. He should have been murdered by Baek’s men. He should be alone, he should be drunk and homeless or dead in a ditch somewhere.
He’s afraid this, too, will go the way it's not supposed to. That she’s used all of her good luck on him. 10% is ten out of a hundred. His vision begins to turn black at the edges again.
“ Hey. Sit down. ”
*
She brings him a glass of cold water from the fridge. He hates water from the tap, but he always forgets to refill the plastic pitchers in the fridge.
She does it for him, when she leaves in the morning knowing she won’t be able to come back for a couple of days. There’s so many little things like that that she thinks about now.
For so long she felt like she was floating without a purpose, at a job where she didn’t matter, in a family where she was the third child and didn't have any particular purpose, either. She’s found a place to belong, here.
She doesnt want it to be over.
She runs her hand down the back of his head, the nape of his neck. His throat bobs as he drinks the water in one sitting.
She never thought herself to be particularly maternal, but she doesn’t know another way to describe the feeling here, when she caresses his hair as he drinks, when she cooks for him and feeds him and wants to hold him against her chest while she whispers sweet nothings and doesn’t expect anything in return.
She knows not all women are built like this, but she is; inherited from her own mother.
She spent a lot of time pretending it wasn’t true, that she didn’t need anyone but herself and the world inside her own mind, but she’s not denying herself any longer. She’s learned to take her fill of life. She likes it, and he returns the favor, every time.
“I know why they don't usually let fathers be in the delivery room when babies are born,” he says, breaking her out of her self indulgent reverie. His voice is still a little rough, but at least she kept him from fainting.
“Because it's women’s business?” she asks, knowing he won’t agree.
“Because we’re weak,” he says, and she knows he means ‘we ’ as in men, but she hears ‘ we ’ as in fathers, and her throat constricts with longing. They’ve never talked about it, she thought they had all the time in the world. Now, nothing is promised. It never was, she realizes, and is glad that she’d started taking what she wanted three years ago, when she asked for his worship, and not three days ago when she got the test results.
“Men are weak bastards,” he says. “You’re sick and I'm the one falling apart.”
It’s vile, the way for a second she was secretly pleased he had a panic attack at finding out she’s ill. It’s vile and awfully human. Ah, he does love me .
He looks up at her, his eyes big and wet. “If I saw you giving birth, suffering like that, I’d be mad at myself and at our own baby too, as soon as he was born.”
She smiles, she can’t help it.
He’s so damn funny when he doesn’t mean to be.
And then reality dawns back on her. It’s happened often these past few days: she’ll be at work or getting lunch or taking the train home, and it will be a normal day until he remembers she has cancer.
She lets her hand fall from where it still rested on his head, and takes a seat across from his at the table.
“I thought I was pregnant, you know? I noticed…I stained my bra. So I went and I took a test and everything. And when it was negative, that's when I went to the hospital.”
It had felt like a betrayal, for the strange hope to turn to fear so abruptly.
“Have they told you about treatments?” he asks.
She nods.
“We’ll do it together,” he says. “I’ll go with you.”
“You don't need to.”
It’s not a sure thing her hair will fall off, but they mentioned the puking, the general unwellness. It’s not even about him seeing her in that way, she has no qualms about showing him everything. It’s her .
She used to feel guilty as a child, when she was ill and her mother had to stop whatever she was doing to tend to her. She’s never been comfortable with it, suffering in front of other people. Accepting their care and worry and service when she can’t fend for herself. It’s uncomfortable.
“I’ll go with you,” he repeats.
His breathing picks up again, and she feels ill for any pleasure she felt at his initial reaction. She doesn’t want him to suffer. He meets her eyes and he looks desperate.
“I know I don't say it but, you know, don't you? You know. You're…you’re everything to me.”
Her breath catches in her throat.
“I never—” he shakes his head. “I told you I really liked you, as if that could even—I worship you, I do. But I love you too. You’re the only person I love. You must know.”
It’s hard to breathe. Her chest feels tight and her eyes burn.
He looks straight at her, and the look in his eyes pierces her soul.
“You're the only thing that matters to me.”
The worry appears then, the possibility that she hasn’t let herself think about too hard because she needed to be able to function at her work through the rest of the week. A Tuesday is a horrible day to get bad news about your health, and she pushed it down until now, until a Friday where she could tell the people in her life, where she could worry outside of company time. And now her boyfriend is falling apart before her eyes. If she dies, what about him?
“That’s not true,” she says. “It’s not right. What about yourself?”
She was deliriously proud of him when he chose to quit drinking, but she was even happier that he did it for himself.
“I wouldn't be here if it wasn't for you,” he tells her. “You know that's true.”
“Maybe,” she concedes, aware of the serendipities that led him into her life. “But I can't be the only thing you care about. If this doesnt end well—”
“No.”
“You have to promise me you’ll be okay.”
“No.”
She needs it for her peace of mind. If worse comes to worse her dad will have her siblings, and her siblings will have their partners and each other. But him…
“ Jagyeong-ah —”
“ Don't call me by my name when you’re saying things like that.”
“Even if the worst happens…you’ll survive,” she tells him. He is a survivor, she knows that much, and he knows it too, even if he refuses to think of himself nicely. “You did it before,” she adds.
It’s the wrong thing to say, she knows it as soon as it leaves her lips.
“Ah. Is that you punishing me for not telling you I loved you when I should have?” he asks, and it’s not that—not really.
You were with her for far longer than you’ve known me, let alone been with me, she wants to tell him. She wants his response, because she’s not as evolved as she wants to believe she is. But this is not the right conversation for it
He shakes his head,
“If something happens to you, I’m not spending the last 30 years of my life in an endless fucking marathon to my grave,” he says firmly, leaving no room for argument. His meaning is clear.
“You’d do that to me?”
“You’ll be dead, you won’t care.” The last time she heard him sound like this he fucked off to Seoul and changed his number, and she didn’t see him for years. He’s being harsh, in that way he is when he’s feeling too much.
“Don’t you believe in God? I don't think he looks kindly upon what you’re talking about.”
“I don't believe in heaven. Not for me, I never did.”
She’ll think about it later, the meaning of carrying that cross around his neck when he didn’t believe himself worthy of salvation, but not now.
“I didn't care before, but now I want to. Before this…I thought the emptiness was comforting. ‘ I’ll just die one day when I'm old and this will all be over. ’ But then, after we met again…a lifetime doesn't seem like enough time. I want there to be a heaven so I can meet you there.”
He looks at her like she is that heaven.
“ Yeom Mijeong .”
“It’s funny, I never really cared about what comes after, where we go. But now I can't help thinking—”
He kisses her.
She’s not sure how he got up and into her space in a split second, but she can’t do anything but react when his arms around her and his lips are so persistent against hers. Her senses are overwhelmed with him, by him.
His stubbled chin scratches her own, his fingers dig into her side.
When he pulls away, her lips are wet and red. So are her eyes.
“I just want to make sure you're alright, no matter what,” she tells him, breathless.
That’s what it comes down to. In this moment, she cares about his happiness more than she cares about her own, or her health, or the battle ahead. She just wants to make sure that he’ll be okay.
He cups her jaw between his big warm hands.
“You’re going to be fine, for both of us,” he tells her firmly. “I'm an asshole, remember? So I'm not promising you anything. If you want to make sure I’m okay, you’ll have to stick around for the rest of my life. Do you understand?”
She chuckles. It’s this side of wrong, of unsettling, of weird. Like asking him to worship her to build herself up. Like him asking her to be his therapist as a part time job. It’s very them .
She nods.