Chapter 15

"What should we get Beomgyu hyung when we visit?" Mused Taehyun one afternoon during lunch. "Hm, what about flowers? Does he like flowers, Yeonjun hyung?" Hueningkai inquired, putting down his banana milk before he turned to stare at the oldest of the three.

Upon the mention of his name, Yeonjun snapped out of his daydream. "I think he'll like anything you get him." Answered Yeonjun, half-heartedly.

"Then, what type of flower would be a good choice? Roses?" Taehyun asked, a hand supporting his chin as he stared off contemplatively. After a moment, Yeonjun spoke up. "Red asters."

"Why red asters?" Asked Hueningkai, mouth half-full.

"Red asters signify undying devotion." Said the oldest boy, picking at his lunch with a fork, uninterested.

Immediately, the other two understood, and didn't inquire any more.

But, of course, Beomgyu didn't have to know all that.

"They got you a bouquet of red aster, how thoughtful." Yeonjun spoke, positioning the younger's arms so that he was now holding onto the bouquet with both hands.

"Don't look at me with that face, come on now. My presence itself is already your gift. What more can you ask for?" He lightly teased, a half-smile on his face as he reached up to stroke the boy's hair. "Soobin has something for you as well."

At the mention of his name, the nurse came closer to the other side of the bed. Lightly clearing his throat, he pulled something from behind his back, and placed it onto Beomgyu's head. "It isn't much, but I hope you like it."

It was a flower crown, strung up out of maple leaves in varying hues of auburn. "Me and Yeonjun went to get the leaves from the tree you liked." He added, tone somehow timid and shy.

Dressed in white, laid within a sea of origami hearts with a bouquet of red asters and a maple crown on his head—Beomgyu looked like a forest prince. He was beautiful in a way that filled Yeonjun's heart with butterflies as quickly as they faded into ashen embers.

If he was going to go, this would be the best they could afford to do his beauty justice.

"You turn eighteen today, Gyu." Quietly, Yeonjun spoke up. The candle on top of the cake had melted halfway through, and it tore the four of them apart that the birthday boy couldn't even make a wish to blow it. "Are you done making your wish? I'm going to blow it out for you." He said, more to himself than to Beomgyu, before putting out the flickering flame. The cake looked ravishing—Yeonjun made sure to order it from the city's top bakery—yet not even one out of the four of them looked like they had the appetite. Therefore, Taehyun reached in to put the cake away on top of a nearby cabinet.

Then, out of the corner of his eyes, Yeonjun saw several nurses peeking through the blinds of their room window. He saw Soobin immediately turn to them, signalling them to stay outside.

Yeonjun felt as if he had roughly been woken up from a dream, body frozen. Have they come to remove all these tubes from Beomgyu? Was it already time?

The taller boy turned and met his eyes; and Yeonjun's chest constricted with the look of grief and devastation in them. Yet, they both remained silent. Neither Taehyun nor Hueningkai spoke either, mindful of the silence.

What else was there to say? Would it still be worth it to pretend that all was well, saying that he would get better soon; or tell him about his future outside of the hospital that they all knew he wouldn't have? Would it still be worth it to pretend?

At that moment, Yeonjun decided. Like a flip of a switch, the mask of cheerfulness slipped off his face, revealing underneath the forlorn look of a boy who was just about to lose everything in front of his eyes.

A word hadn't yet left his mouth when his eyes began to well up with hot tears. Behind him, both Taehyun and Hueningkai rested a comforting hand on either side of his shoulders. He took in a deep breath, averting his eyes up to stare at the ceiling to hold back his tears.

"Beomgyu," he started. Soobin's eyes slightly widened at the tone of the older's voice—he had heard him say this name numerous times, yet never once had it been so clearly laced with so much desperation. So much pain.

"Soon, we're gonna tuck you in."

It was the best way he could explain it without outright telling the younger that he'd be dead in a few minutes. Yeonjun could never find it in him to say it. His whole body began to double in weight, the hands resting on his shoulders suddenly feeling so heavy that lifting a finger was a struggle. "There's so much I still want to tell you."

Soobin made a little gesture, and the next moment, he and the other two had retreated to the furthest corner of the room. They were giving him space to say goodbye, Yeonjun realised.

So, he deeply inhaled, looked at the forest prince in front of him, and began.

"I talk to you every day, yet it still feels like no matter how much I keep going, it'll never be enough." His heart tightened in his chest at what he was about to say next, feeling like it was stabbed with a thousand daggers at all the wrong angles. "You know what? Your hyung's a coward. He's always been a coward, and even now he still couldn't outgrow himself to not be one." He chuckled humorlessly, trying to blink away his tears.

He hung his head low, feeling his chest constrict yet again. The butterflies he had once ignored all those years ago came back to him—except instead of his chest being filled with warmth, it now throbbed like said butterflies festered into plaguing viruses, eating him up from the inside out.

Internally, his heart wept, crying out for the boy in front of him—for his Beomgyu that he cherished so much; the same one whose life had been ripped away from him when he did nothing to deserve it. And yet Yeonjun still couldn't convey how much Beomgyu meant to him. He realised then that no words would ever come close to expressing what he wanted to say.

"Do you want to know why I'm a coward, Beomgyu?" He lifted his head, the smile on his face growing melancholic. "Because there were so many things I wanted to say to you that I couldn't." A pause.

The only sound left in the room came from the steady beep of Beomgyu's heart monitor.

"Because I was afraid of what you'd think of me then, if I did." He finally confessed, voice so achingly vulnerable and raw it took the other three by surprise. He'd never felt this vulnerable before, emotions spilling out like waves rushing through a broken dam. He momentarily almost forgot that others were in the room when he tried to continue.

"The fear of losing you haunted me, and I couldn't lose you. You were the only thing I had. We were the only things we had, and I couldn't be selfish like that. I was scared to even change the smallest things between us, in case you didn't feel the same. And guess what? I wish I took the chance." He couldn't even finish his sentence before his voice cracked halfway through, yet he paid it no mind. The ache in his chest was now rising to his throat, the guilt making him taste bile.

"That day, at the park—when I impulsively kissed you, and the look on your face after I did—I almost said it." He whispered as he turned to look at Beomgyu's face, the younger looking almost too peaceful at Yeonjun's confession. He looked so serene nestled between those white sheets, the only colour coming not from his complexion but the origami hearts surrounding his frame.

Yeonjun thought to himself that no matter how vivid or bright the flowers were, they would never compare to how much brighter the younger was. Not enough bouquets, flower crowns nor paper hearts in the world would ever do justice the phenomenon that was Choi Beomgyu.

He swallowed back a pained breath before remembering to continue. "I wanted to say it so badly, but a part of me feared for my life that the next second—your eyes would look at me with sparks no longer, but a spit of disgust. That you would distance yourself from me, pushing me away because I ruined it for us.

"However, that was the second happiest moment of my life. I wish I told you then, but I wasn't brave enough", He clenched his fists, knuckles now turning white.

"Even now, I'm not. It took me years of lying to myself, feeding my heart false hope instead of trying to prepare myself for this moment, which I knew would come. I knew it would, but I was foolish enough to think that it wouldn't; as long as the day isn't today, and I'm still by your side. Like somehow that would keep the inevitable away. Which idiot thinks like that?" He let out another dry laugh, tears now freely streaming down his cheeks as his heart slowly crumbled behind the constraint that was his chest.

Quietly, he pulled a piece of paper heart from his jacket pocket, and inserted it into Beomgyu's hold. "Paper hearts. After all, it was your favourite song, right? Remember the first time you sang it to me with your guitar in your bedroom? We were barely fifteen. I can still recall how beautiful you sounded then, but I was too cowardly to tell it to your face. I teased you and said you sounded like a cow, when in reality I was too busy being distracted by the beating of my heart to even hear you properly."

He wondered if the younger heard his heart beating then, with how loud it was. It would have been hard to miss. "If you asked me how and when it started, I couldn't even give you a truthful answer. I wonder if I've felt this way all along, but I was just too young and dumb to notice.

"I thought everyone felt this way about their best friend, because I simply didn't know better." He chuckled with mirth at the memory of his younger self. "I remembered asking myself, is it normal to feel so unreasonably excited just to see someone smile? To feel heat crawl up your face when you hold someone else's hand? Is it normal for me to always stare at you each time you weren't looking, and whenever you spoke, I couldn't take my eyes off your lips?"

It sounded so painfully obvious now that he said it aloud, and he wondered how he could have been so dumb. He glanced at the younger's now pale lips, a pang of hurt hitting him at the sight. "For the entirety of my life, I convinced myself into thinking that it was normal. Who knew I was so foolish?

"Maybe it's a little too late now, but that time on your bed—when I asked you if you've ever wondered how your first kiss would go? Yeah, it was me making the most pathetic excuse of my life just so I could kiss you. I was so desperate, I was willing to live up to the rest of that lie," He just kept going and going, years of bottled emotions finally seeing light. And they weren't going to stop anytime soon. "Just so I could feel your lips against mine at the time. I didn't understand what the feeling was, but I just knew that if I didn't get to kiss you then, I would explode."

Oh, how young and foolish they were. He remembered asking himself what could go wrong. He didn't exactly prepare himself for the answer to that question to be everything.

"I didn't expect you to buy it. I wondered, for the slightest fraction of a moment, if the same thoughts were going through your head when I pulled away, and saw you look at me with those eyes." He could never forget the look Beomgyu gave him, eyes filled with something he couldn't identify as their gazes met after their first kiss. "I was too scared to find out the answer to that. But that.. That was probably the happiest I've ever been."

And he poured and poured his heart out to the boy in front of him, feeling as if he would choke on his own feelings if he didn't. The rest of the world faded into monochrome behind them. To Yeonjun, Beomgyu was the only thing left in colour anymore. Nothing else mattered.

"You make me so happy, Choi Beomgyu. Each day spent with you, I took it for granted because I was a fool who couldn't recognise it; the way his heart rattled in his chest every time you look at him. Whenever you're not around, I lay in bed counting the days—hours, minutes, seconds —until I could see you again," at this point, Yeonjun was unpacking every burdened load of his heart to the younger, like an overdue delivery. "This wasn't normal, and I should have known; but it took me several years of not having you by my side to realise that it wasn't.

"These hearts, if only you could open your eyes again. I folded one for you; for each day passed that you haven't woken up." He remembered the whirlwind of blurry days that went by, the only highlight being a hold of the familiar coloured paper; making sure the folds were always crisp and clean. "It was the only thing that gave me a sense of comfort, as I deluded myself into thinking that you'll wake up to a sea of them. I never forgot to fold one every single day, because it was the only thing I looked forward to doing. It was my only purpose.

"In my head, I obsessed over how grand of a gesture this would be. To have you wake up and see the amount of hearts I've made for you—representing the amount of feelings I have for you. I thought it would be so romantic to finally confess then, or even ask you out." He lets out an amused chuckle, the sadness in his tone showing how much of that fantasy he still believed. "It was the only thing that kept me going. The paradise up there in my head was nothing like the reality we're in now.

"Sadly for me, that day isn't going to come. I counted and labeled each one just so I wouldn't lose track of the amount of days spent without you." Then, he stroked Beomgyu's knuckles with his thumb. "This one, I made just before coming in. Heart number 1313." He let out a sigh. "1313 days spent without you. And now I don't have to count anymore, because starting tomorrow, I'll have to spend each day without you for the rest of my life." He said, trying to make it sound matter-of-fact. He failed miserably as his form slumped.

"If only you could see—if only you could look at me now and see me for the first time as who I truly am; not as your childhood best friend who swore to protect you, but as a boy who's been hopelessly in love with you since the moment he met you." His eyes glanced up to catch the younger's, trying his best to trace every detail of his face into the deepest part of his memory—from the slope of his cheeks to his lips, now concealed behind the foggy oxygen mask.

"It's you, Beomgyu. It's always been you—I swear on all the times I secretly looked at you at the playground of our elementary school, and all the times I made the silliest excuses just to hold your hand—it's always been you." Finally saying it made Yeonjun feel like a heavy burden had been finally lifted from his chest, so he kept going, desperately trying to chase that sense of relief. He knew it wouldn't last a moment longer if he wasn't careful.

"And it will always be you. For every single birthday, ever since I met you, the only thing I've ever wished for was you." To himself, Yeonjun covered his face and broke into a pathetic laugh.

"The way the world works is so unfair," he choked back a sob. "You never did anything to deserve any of this. You were the best thing to ever happen to me—the only good thing to have entered my life. How am I supposed to go on now? You're so cruel, Beomgyu. What happened to forever? Will I ever see you again?" He was full on weeping now, face drenched with messy streaks of tears he didn't bother to wipe away. Beomgyu wouldn't see them anyway, and this time he didn't even bother to try.

"If heaven exists… Will we meet again? Will I find you there?" He whispered on a whim, still audaciously hoping, lips pressed against the younger's ice cold knuckles. Even Beomgyu's hands were now stained wet with his tears.

"If it does exist, Choi Beomgyu—you have one last promise you need to make to me."

He let out a cracked plea, "Please, wait for me at the gate. No matter how long it takes, I'll find you again. I always do. This time, allow me to fulfill my part in protecting you until the end of forever." He kissed each one of the younger's fingers. Something about it felt final and definite, like goodbye was near. The pain in his chest had bloomed into raging fire, consuming his insides and burning its way out of Yeonjun's tongue. Each word began to hang heavier than the last.

"And this time, when I tell you I love you—you better say it back." He pressed one last kiss to Beomgyu's hand before pulling away. He felt like smashed porcelain being held together by dried glue, so close to falling apart once again yet somehow still intact. It was the most horrible feeling Yeonjun had ever experienced.

The room was dead quiet when he stopped speaking. He glanced to the side, and was surprised to find all three of his other friends equally teary-eyed. Hueningkai was full on weeping into Taehyun's shoulders, the older holding him in his arms for comfort. Soobin briefly wiped away a single tear with the back of his hand, yet his nose was bright end.

If his friends were crying this hard, Yeonjun didn't want to imagine what he looked like at this moment.

"Now… For my birthday present." He deeply inhaled, trying to regain his composure—or whatever left of it he could muster. "I know I said I didn't prepare a thing, but I wanted to give you one last surprise."

From the corner of the room, Soobin finally walked over and handed him an acoustic guitar. It was lamented with a shade of burgundy wood, its exterior smooth to the touch. The strings were a uniform shade of worn out brass, and tucked securely between them was a plain guitar pick. There were streaks of uneven lines carved into the surface that spelled 'BG', Beomgyu's initials.

It was Beomgyu's guitar, simultaneously also the last thing he begged from Beomgyu's parents to keep.

Yeonjun didn't know how to play the guitar. He never found the interest to learn, although Beomgyu offered to teach him a few times.

Now he wished he took his offer. But for the past year, because of him, he had been learning—all for the purpose of one day being able to play this song to him, yet this wasn't exactly how he imagined it'd go down. Alas, what other choice did he have?

Slowly plucking the strings in a soft finger style, he played the beginning melody of the song.

"Remember the way you made me feel. Such young love, but. Something in me knew that it was real, frozen in my heart."

They say that when you're happy, you enjoy the melody; but when you're sad, you understand the lyrics.

Nothing had ever resonated with him quite as hard as the lyrics were at this moment. Internally, he asked God if this was one sick joke.

Soobin, Taehyun and Hueningkai remained silent in their respective corner as they listened to Yeonjun sing. He had a hauntingly beautiful voice, the song sounding so alluring as each note flitted past his lips. The melancholic melody would make for a perfect lullaby, had it not been for the agonising circumstance they were in. It pained Yeonjun to realise that this was the first and last time he'd ever sing for Beomgyu.

"Memories are playing in my door mind, I hate this part. Paper hearts, and I'll hold a piece of yours."

In his head, Yeonjun could almost perfectly envision the echo of Beomgyu's voice as he sang this exact line to him years ago. If he closed his eyes now, he was convinced the next time he opened them, he would return to being on Beomgyu's bed on that fateful day; with the younger boy shyly singing to him, red as a tomato.

His heart sank in despair when he opened his eyes again and he was still in the same hospital room.

After a few uneventful minutes of his voice and the monitor beep being the only sounds in the room, he played the last note on the acoustic guitar, letting it fade into silence as he paused singing.

Slowly, he set it aside, standing up. In the corner of the room, three pairs of eyes slightly widened as Yeonjun leaned over, half hovering above the boy on the bed.

"Don't think I would just forget about it."

A single tear dropped past his cheeks, landing perfectly onto Beomgyu's. Normally, Yeonjun would scold himself for such carelessness; but right now, he couldn't care about anything else in the world.

He paused for a second, taking in the sight of Beomgyu one last time.

"Hoping that you won't forget."

With a visibly trembling hand, he inched closer, reaching in—and carefully pulled the oxygen mask from Beomgyu's face. Behind him, he could hear Soobin let out an audible gasp.

But Yeonjun couldn't care less as he bent down, cupping Beomgyu's ice cold cheek in his palms, and pressed his lips against his. One last time.

"Choi Beomgyu, I love you so much it hurts."

The kiss was stale and uneventful; just Yeonjun's lips blandly attached to Beomgyu's. The latter's were far colder, far paler, far rougher than the last time he'd felt them, but Yeonjun took what he could get. Not even an ounce of warmth on Beomgyu's entire body was left to the touch anymore, his complexion lifelessly cold. At the back of Yeonjun's mind, he could also hear shuffling and hushed voices, yet he didn't care.

This was going to be his last moment with Beomgyu, so he wanted to focus on him and him only. Distantly, he could hear the steady beep of the younger's heartbeat monitor pick up into frantic hikes. His own heart jumped inside his chest, yet he didn't pull away. If anything, he pressed in closer, deepening the kiss.

It dawned upon Yeonjun then that it was finally happening. Yet, even then, a part of him dared hope. He hoped that at the very last second, before everything was about to slip past his grasp forever; that the boy beneath him would at the very least flinch.

So when the irregular beeps of his heart rate flatlined into a monotonous screech, Yeonjun finally let out the most defeated sob in his entire life.

As he pulled away, he could barely even look at the boy anymore. His vision was blurry with tears, choked breaths barely meeting their ends. He didn't realise when the room began to flood with numerous people in white coats, but the next thing he knew, he was abruptly pulled away.

It didn't quite hit him until he was being dragged by the shoulders by Taehyun and Hueningkai—with Soobin and the nurses covering Beomgyu's body with a white cloth—only then did he finally shatter.

Footsteps were rapid and frantic as medical professionals flitted in and out of the room; and Yeonjun felt like his heart was the floor they were trampling on.

He wanted to scream, cry, yell—anything to express just the agony that was tearing his body in two. If he did, he didn't hear it. Was he trying to run after the bed that was slowly being pushed out the door? Was that why Soobin was suddenly in front of him, hands on his face, with Taehyun and Hueningkai physically restraining him? Yeonjun couldn't quite recall.

As he caught the very last glimpse of the godforsaken hospital bed being ushered out of his vision, Yeonjun's knees suddenly gave in. His heart felt like it was going to slip out of his throat with how hard he was sobbing, yet to him, he could no longer hear a sound. The silence inside his head was deafening.

Was it silence? Or was it the blaring buzz of the heart monitor replaying itself in his head, so deafeningly loud he was unable to register anything else?

They say when you love someone, sometimes the best thing you can do for them is let them go.

Choi Beomgyu died on his eighteenth birthday. However, when he did, a piece of Choi Yeonjun he couldn't regain also died along with him.

And from then on, Yeonjun would have to live with half a heart for the rest of his life—however long that rest would be.

What either of them failed to notice, however—was the way a single tear flowed past the younger boy's closed eyes, just a heartbeat before the white cloth was draped over his visage.

No matter how long it takes, I'll find you again.