The Buddy Program

01 | vending machine twix bars

And his grades fell so bad, he nearly flunked senior year. His aunt had to work something out with the school so he could graduate, and even though he did manage to get by, it wasn't like he was well enough to walk at graduation or go on the trips or party with his kinda-friends and kiss strangers and feel like a normal teenager.

Jeongguk couldn't really remember what normal was anymore. All he knew were four, gray walls, the rhythmic drip of an IV with 'treatment' that was doing more harm than his tumor did, and the stupid reclining chair with the vomit bucket and the apple juice carton that honestly mocked him (could apple juice even mock people?).

But hear him out, it somehow got worse.

Turned out he didn't actually have cancer. Or well, he had a cancerous mass and chemo did its job and worked, but that wasn't the end.

As Jeongguk made his recovery, there was something else. Another potentially un-normaling disease to spice up his pretty fucking boring life.

He had this incredibly rare diagnosis that nobody in the medical community knew about. It was so rare there were barely any studies on it, and god, if that sounded like ass, it was basically a terminal illness with no cure.

It was a terminal illness that killed you over time in the worst fucking slowburn ever. Not the romance kind of slowburn but the type where little by little your body would shut down, and when it got to the final stage— organ failure— it was practically over for Jeongguk.

His own body was edging him, except he didn't know how edging felt because cancer made him a fucking virgin for way too long. So yeah, that was that.

Not only did he nearly visit death's doorstep after a year or so of aggressive chemo, any hope that he would perhaps get better and find his way back to a normal life were crushed. Again.

He was going to actually die for sure this time, and the thing was, he didn't know when.

The doctors gave him less than a year, depending on how fast the disease progressed.

Fast forward, he was nineteen now. Beat their dumb predictions by a few months but before he could get the chance to celebrate, his condition plummeted. What was supposed to be a harmless cold turned into fucking pneumonia, and now the doctors were saying he had a good six months left if the disease was targeting his immune system first.

After that, Jeongguk decided that maybe normalcy wasn't for him— he just didn't deserve that, or well, anything at all, really.

The world already proved it to him. Multiple times.

"So you basically enrolled me into daycare? What am I, three?" Jeongguk slammed the car door shut behind him, watching his Aunt Sae skeptically as she walked around the car to join his side, the two of them heading toward the hospital.

"It's not daycare. God, when did you get so judgmental?" Sae rolled her eyes at him, locked her Mercedes Benz, and gestured at him to follow her.

"Ever since your team said I was gonna die in six months," Jeongguk retorted, having to jog a little to match his aunt's pace, but she noticed his struggle and thankfully slowed down.

"The world is fucking stupid. Might as well point out all of its little insecurities and judge it. Maybe even bully it too 'cuz I'ma die anyway."

"Jeongguk, you're not gonna die," She said, squinting at him through her round, tortoise shell glasses that made her look absolutely stupid but Jeongguk said they were nice to flatter her anyway.

"Bullshit," He said. Sae met him with silence, all except for the constant click of her heels against the pavement. "Oh and you know I'm capable of using a toilet right? It's not like I'm senile and need fucking diapers."