𝗰𝗼𝗻𝘀𝘁𝗲𝗹𝗹𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻 [jonggi]

twenty three

My throat is dry. The water bottle next to me is empty but I don't have the strength to get up and refill it.

I prefer to sit in this chair at his bedside, my head tilted back, staring desperately at the ceiling light.

Now that I think about it, our apartment must have been lifeless for over a week.

Since he didn't wake up.

I don't have a nail to chew on. Mingi has only been here one afternoon, and even then it was only for an hour. I think the lifeless image of the person he loves terrifies him despite all the nice words he says.

I'm terrified of it too.

San brings me every day the notes of his classes with three milkshakes, in case Jongho is talking to me. It's touching, but I never say anything. Not even a thank you, just a kiss on the corner of his cheek. Besides, he is not allowed to sleep here at night, unlike me.

However, without San, sleep is nowhere to be found.

A cold draft suddenly crosses the room. A chill climbs up my back until it nestles in the middle of my neck.

I find some semblance of warmth by pulling the blanket tighter against my chest, yet my stomach twists as a bad feeling is born in the pit of my mind.

I've never been a believer.

But if a deity could have erased the aftertaste that this draft had left, I would have prayed to her all night long.

For before my tear-fogged eyes, a dozen people had flooded the room before the deafening alarm in the bedroom brought me back to the present moment.

- Turn up the oxygen!

My eardrums are slowly drowning.

- At this rate we're going to lose him!

I have never liked hospitals, yet I had always been more serene when Jongho was in their hands.

- He's having a cardiac arrest.

But this time,

- Step aside.

It was different.

- I have a pulse.

Mingi..., sometimes I wonder if we have the right to shed a tear, because, if there is one he hasn't yet, it is him.

The one who fights between life and death.

The distressed tone of a nurse puts an end to my internal chaos.

- Mr. Jung?

I raise my indifferent face to his distressed expression.

- Can we talk in the hallway?

I nod. Besides, I can't say no, can I ?

The door closes, her arms cross under her chest before she begins her monologue:

- We were able to get a pulse from his cardiac arrest, however he is very weak.

I thought that if I prepared myself for it, I wouldn't mind hearing it.

- I don't think he'll make it through the next forty-eight hours...

In the end, it's worse than I expected.

- I know you are a small group of friends, so I think it would be favorable for each of them to come by tomorrow during the day, to say goodbye even though I doubt he will wake up.

After a sympathetic smile, her figure evaporates in the light of a street lamp.

My legs give out and my body collapses against the wall. My eyes are wide open but still dry, my lips are sealed but my jaw is hardly contracted.

My head is simply heavy and my heart is ready to explode.

Please wait,

We will put you in line with your correspondent...

...

- Woo?

- S-Sanie...

It was quarter past three,

-W-Woo...d-tell me he's not...

And he had, in spite of everything, answered at the first ring.

- ..It's only a matter of time.

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Still crying hard over the translation and even though it's been almost ten months I ended this story.