—First life. St. Vincent's Hospital, year 2027—
I shouldn't have taken it lightly when they warned me about it.
The scans, the blood tests, the physical examination, most of them I could handle. Until it came the time for them to lay me down and put a massive needle right through my spine to take a piece of a membrane from the growing monster inside me.
"Baby, it's okay," Jimin held my trembling hands with one of his while he uses the other to brush my dampened hair away from my face, where my sweat and tears came together as I tried to hold back the pain. "Look at me, baby. Just a little while longer. Take a deep breath and keep your eyes on me."
I kept my eyes on Jimin as I felt as if they were sucking the life out of me. And I was relieved that he was there, for his eyes were hypnotising me enough to make me feel as if the pain was somewhere far away.
It was quite unusual for the hospital to allow someone other than an immediate family or a member of the doctor's team to be there while they were doing these tests. But I was so frightened about the test that I had a major panic attack about it and I was also feeling terribly exhausted after going through a bunch of tests running the whole day that I was practically crying and begging for them to let me take a break. That was when Jimin came into the room and offered to help.
"Let me be there so she won't freak out. I won't interrupt, I promise," he said then, basically pleading for them to let him in, before Dr. Kim finally gave in and gave him permission to enter the room.
An excruciating pain struck me so badly as I felt them pulling the needle out that I cried out and Jimin pressed his lips on my forehead, completely ignoring the fact that I was sweating buckets when he did. "You did good, love. It's over now," he whispered to me.
I looked up to him through my tears and tried to speak, though I could barely get my voice out while I kept sobbing as the pain was still too much for me to handle. "It hurts," I cried with a whisper.
Jimin nodded his head knowingly. He was smiling at me as a way to encourage me, but his gaze was filled with sadness and pain, as if seeing me hurt had caused him just the same amount of pain. "You are brave, baby. You got through it good," he said while kissing my tears away. "Just close your eyes and focus on my voice while the nurse is finishing up. I'm not going anywhere."
He gave me a chaste kiss on my lips and my sobs slowly came to halt. The pain still lingered even once the doctor and his team had finished his job. I could hear his voice complementing me while letting me know that it was over and I could feel it when he cleaned my wound and patched me up before he left. But all I ever wanted to focus on was Jimin's voice as he kept whispering sweet things to me and on the way he was holding my hands tight to let me know that I was not alone.
His presence was my cure and it was then when I finally realised that he had become the rock that kept me together. When I felt his lips on mine as I closed my eyes, I knew then that I could face and conquer anything as long as I had him with me, for it was the love I felt and the compassion I saw in his eyes that became the only things keeping me alive.
Jimin joined me in my bed that night.
We were lying on our sides and facing each other, talking about all the pointless things in life to get my mind away from the throbbing pain on my back, when he reached out, brushing his fingers gently across my cheek.
"You are so beautiful," he suddenly whispered. I was caught off guard that I fell silent for a moment, before I started laughing. I could not believe that he would randomly say such a sweet thing right in the middle of mint chocolate versus cookie dough ice cream flavour discourse we were having.
"That was so random," I whispered back. The goofy smile on my face refused to stay clear that I had to hide it by pressing my face down on my pillows.
"It just came to my mind," he said, chuckling while he tilted my chin up so I could look at him again. He grazed his thumb gently across my lips before replacing it with a kiss. "I want to fall asleep watching your face and listening to your voice, then wake up to see this face and this smile again the next morning."
"Are you trying to tell me that you're getting sleepy?" I teased him, while he only smiled at me.
"Aren't you the one who is supposed to be asleep?" he asked me. "I can tell that you're forcing yourself to keep your eyes open. You must be tired after the long day you've had."
I took his hand and started kissing his knuckles. "I am really tired. But I'm too scared to sleep."
Jimin furrowed his brows as he looked at me. "Why?"
Shrugging, I could only tell him the truth. Or at least, half of it. "I feel calm when I'm with you. I don't want to wake up to find you gone."
As I looked into his eyes, all of the things I was so afraid of, all of my fears came to mind.
The truth was, I was too afraid to sleep because I had feared that I would not wake up the next morning. Or that I would wake up, only to find out that everything around me had disappeared.
Would it be wrong of me to feel as if all of this might fade away? I kept feeling as if he would disappear from my sight anytime I looked away and I refused to have that. It had been so long for me to feel like this. To feel something so intense that I just wanted to grab him tight and not let go before he could fade away.
Jimin reached out, cupping my cheek with his palm to bring me back to him and not lose myself in my thoughts. His lips tilted up to a small smile when he promised me, "I'll be here when you wake up. I'll never leave you, ______. Not unless you want me to."
"Promise?"
His smile didn't change, but his gaze did. There was something in his eyes that told me how scared he was to make that promise. Instead of giving me an answer, he leaned closer and kissed my lips gently, giving me his silent answer that I could hold on to instead of his words.
"Go to sleep and get some rest. I'll hold you and wake you up when morning comes."
That night, as I fell asleep in his arms, I had a long, dreamless sleep for the first time in my life. And it felt wonderful.
"Is it going to be like this every time this happens?"
It was the day after and Jimin had once again found his spot at the edge of my bed while we had our lunch. He kept his promise to be there when I woke up this morning, his misty eyes greeted me warmly when I opened mine. Then he insisted to give me his morning kisses no matter how hard I tried to fight him against it.
The only time he left was early in the day when I had to be cleaned up and checked by the nurses and he had to return to his bedroom for his own morning routines. The nurse who helped me bathe had joked about us sharing a room together in the future to make it easier for us but I brushed it off by saying that I needed my privacy.
That was until I started missing him so badly when morning past to noon and I nearly leapt out of my bed and into his arms when he walked into my room to keep me company at lunch.
I had sworn that I felt extremely famished before my meal arrived. But now, I was suddenly having trouble to eat or to swallow anything more than two spoonfuls of my meal. I was still exhausted and drowsy from the excessive hours of treatment I got yesterday and from the medications I got this morning that all I wanted to do was to lie down and close my eyes, instead of pushing down anything past my bitter tongue that could barely taste anything at all.
Jimin reached out and placed his hand on my knee just as I dropped my spoon. He patiently smiled at me when he answered me, "It comes and goes. Sometimes you'll be able to eat everything that they give to you, but there will be times when your body refuses all the food and drinks no matter how much you used to enjoy them."
I remembered when I first started the treatment and my medications would make me so nauseated that my body would refuse to take in anything at all. When I first questioned the nurses about it, the only warning I got was how things would grow more intense as I continued the treatment. It was expected that my body would react this way, yet it certainly did not feel good when it was finally happening.
My eyes fell on Jimin's plate and noticed that he was also having trouble to take in more food. But he was pushing through it. Nibbling small portions of food each time he ate until the last bit of his meal.
"How do you get through it?" I asked him, wondering how he managed to do it when he had been taking these treatments and had been here to endure everything much longer than I had.
"I have found my own tricks to be able to eat," he said, passing me a small cup of his pudding when he knew I wouldn't be able to finish up the rest of my meal. "Soft textured food, like pudding and cakes, or anything sweet can trigger my taste bud and bring my appetite back when everything else tastes too bitter. Fruits and milkshakes help a lot too. And it's always a good idea to have some light snacks in between to keep your stomach filled even when you can't swallow your meal."
As I took a few small spoons of the sweet pudding he gave me, I found that he was right. I had no problem in taking it in, even if I could only take a few small bites of them at a time. I took a mental note to make a grocery list for Hoseok to get for me once he would return to accompany me at the hospital.
Jimin must have noticed something on my face that had him grown wary, because he suddenly reached out just as I froze up, completely lost in my own thoughts for a moment that I stopped eating.
"Hey, I have an idea," he said, brushing his thumb across my knee until he finally grabbed my attention.
His smile lit up while his eyes were glowing with excitement when he suddenly suggested, "Why don't you finish up, and then we can watch some movies and nap for a while. Then later, if you're feeling good enough to go out, I can take you somewhere so we can watch the sunset together."
"Sunset?" I immediately perked up to the idea, yet I could not imagine how he would manage to show it to me while we were both stuck inside this hospital, which was surrounded by other tall buildings not too far from us instead of a beach or an open field. "How?"
"That's a secret. Try to eat as much as you can and I'll reward you with a little fun trip before I let you rest."
Jimin was so secretive about it that I was half expecting him to blindfold me before he moved me into my wheelchair and started wheeling me away from my bedroom.
He seemed to know the way as he guided us both with ease through the hallways of our floor, snatched an empty elevator leading up, then found his way up, all the way to the rooftop.
"You are fucking unbelievable," I mused at him as he pushed me out the door then led me to one small corner which he called as a 'viewing port', not too far from the hospital's massive helipad and locked my wheelchair where he knew it would be safe for me to take a good look over the horizon. "How on earth did you find your way here?"
Jimin only chuckled. "The older men from our treatment group took me here during the first week I was treated. They did it to entertain me because they noticed I was looking down and lonely. Said one of them was carried to this hospital with a helicopter and he remembered how pretty the sky was when he arrived here. He used to come up here to watch the view whenever he was lonely before he started to bring the others with him," Jimin explained as he spread a lap blanket over my legs to keep me warm, before spreading a different blanket on the concrete bed right beside me so he could sit down and join me watch the scenery.
"We can still see the sun coming down through the massive windows along the hallways on the top floor, but I really think that this is better," he said while looking up to me with a sly grin. "An open air might do good for us too. We've been cooped up in our rooms for so long I'm starting to forget what if feels like to be outside. How the temperature changes as the sun sets or how the air out here feels like."
"It's still the same. The same polluted city air," I mused after taking a long deep breath, the smile on my face was unstoppable as I breathed in the open air which contained none of those sickly scents from inside the hospital.
I heard Jimin chuckling beside me as he reached my hand, entwining our fingers together while we kept our eyes on the indigo coloured sky. "Yeah, don't you miss it?"
Tightening my grip on his hand, I smiled at him, meeting his gleeful eyes before I went back to glancing at the sky before us. "I've missed it a whole lot."
Silence fell between us right after, as we watched the sky changing shades with a mix of red and tangerine streaks of lights dancing together, before it grew into a dark, indigo blue coloured sky as the sun continued to descend and darkness slowly took over. Jimin kept his hand on mine as we marvelled on the beautiful sight, a complete contrast to the white walls and ceilings that had been surrounding us for the past week. As we sat there, letting the darkness engulfed us for a moment before all the lights on the rooftop came to life, I felt warmth and peace for the first time in my life. And when my eyes fell into our entwined hands, for the first time after such a long time, I no longer felt so lonely or lost.
The little trip to the rooftop we made to watch the sun descending between the concrete buildings had made me grow tired that I dozed off right after. When I woke up again, it was already nightfall yet the sky seemed to have only turned dark not too long ago before I opened my eyes.
I was instantly engulfed by everything that was a part of Jimin the moment my senses came to wake — the silky soft bedspread that he used on his bed, the wonderful scent of his sweet cologne which took over the room against the scent of antibiotics and anti-bacterial products, and Jimin himself, who was dozing off right beside me, lying on his back while his hand was resting over his chest.
I could not remember how I had managed to fall asleep on his bed or how we managed to end up in his bedroom, but his warmth and soft breaths had put me at ease that I settled back down against him. If there was something I could immediately notice from being in Jimin's arms, was that I felt like I was at peace and that his presence felt like home.
Moving slightly to get more comfortable by his side, I placed a hand on his chest and had my head resting on his shoulder. I could hear his heartbeat and soft breathing beneath me, lulling me back to sleep.
"You should wake up and go back to your room, love," he suddenly whispered. I felt his lips on my forehead, brushing gently against my skin when he spoke.
I opened my eyes to meet his sleepy ones and pouted. "Don't you want me here?"
Jimin chuckled softly and shook his head. "I do want you here, more than anything. But it's your brother's turn to keep you company for the night," he reminded me with a sly grin, before he reminded me of what had happened the other day. "You practically kicked him out of the bedroom the other night even when you knew that he was so worried about you. He would hate me if you choose me over him again tonight."
Sighing, I rested my head back on his shoulder, wishing that I could just go back to sleep instead. "He'll probably get angry and sulk for a while, but I'm not sure about hating," I murmured against his shirt. "But you're right. I should go back. I'm probably smothering you because I keep bothering you and not give you a proper time to sleep."
He brushed my hair gently with his cold fingers. "I've slept and rested enough, don't you worry. You help me relax whenever you are close, so I don't really mind to have you around," he said, tilting my chin up to let me read all the sincerity in his eyes to know how much he had meant what he said.
The moment I saw his eyes, the urge to keep him close and to hold him tight grew much stronger inside me that I pulled him down to me. Neither of us said anything as our lips met each other, and every word we wanted to say to one another was replaced with a kiss. A very long, deep, and needy kiss to last us the whole night without each other.
It took me quite a long while before I could peel myself off of him. Then, not only did he help me settle down on my wheelchair, he had insisted to wheel me out and take me all the way back to my room.
"You don't have to escort me all the way back too, Jimin. I could've asked the nurse to do this for me," I protested as we finally came to my bedroom and found him sweating a little thanks to the little journey we had to take.
"I wanted to," he said to me with a smile. "A little exercise before bed would be good for me. I also want to kiss you goodnight and tuck you to sleep. Don't you want that?"
Of course, I wanted it.
But I chose to tease him a little by rolling my eyes. "Suit yourself," I playfully scoffed at him. In return, Jimin scooped me out of the wheelchair and helped me lie down on my bed. Watching him carry me in his arms worried me a little, but his playfulness was still there as he tucked me under the blanket and he was showing not even an ounce of pain or any trouble in carrying my weight.
"Good night, love. I hope your dreams tonight will be beautiful," he whispered to me while pressing his lips at my temple.
"Thanks to you, I know they will be."
With my arms wrapped around him, I pulled him down to me so I could kiss his lips. Our kiss lingered, starting gently before it grew deeper when he fell over me. I was so lost in the kiss, lost in his touches, and was feeling as if I was flying high in the sky with how completed I felt and how much he made me feel so secure, as if I was coming home in his arms.
Our lips moulded to one another, our tongue entangled in the cavern of his mouth, and our hands entwined together as he held me close. We became so lost in our love, in the comfort of our warmth as our body were pressed against each other, that the world around us no longer mattered.
We couldn't care if the earth around us would stop spinning, if the time would stop, and we definitely did not notice the presence of a man standing in the doorway. Neither of us realised that there was a pair of eyes watching us closely, rage radiating off of his gaze as he watched the woman he married years ago kissing and embracing another man right before his eyes.