darkcupcakes: Requiem of Winter Days
Title: Requiem of Winter Days
Author: darkcupcakes
Pairing/Focus: Yunho/Yoochun, written from Yunho's POV
Rating: PG-13
Final word count: 14,197
Summary: Yunho goes back into his souvenirs and relates the story of how he met Yoochun, how he came to lose him and how life sometimes as a funny way of making you believe that everything is interconnected, and that it might be possible that everything happens for a reason, whether you ever end up knowing what that reason is or not.
Warning: This is a very sad fic. The death of one of the characters is basically the base of this story.
------
I remember it as if it were yesterday. I was standing in front of the window in my office, letting the rays of sunshine warm the skin of my face, thinking about how it seemed like spring was finally at our door. I could see tiny dots moving, multiples levels down from where I was, people coming and going, some probably filled with hope, others possibly with fear. I could tell the air outside was still chilly as I could see the trees move with the wind. It was on that beautiful spring morning that I met Yoochun.
There had been a knock on my door before it opened and I saw Sooyun’s head peek inside as I turned away from the window and looked in her direction. Sooyun was a nurse in our department, and also a childhood friend of mine, and she was known for her bright smile and her gentle care with patients. Everyone loved her. I motioned for her to come in and she straightened up before pushing the door further open and bowing her head in greeting. She was clutching a clipboard and files, keeping them pressed to her chest.
“Good morning Yunho-sshi,” she said, and stayed rooted to her spot.
“Good morning Sooyun, what can I do for you today?” I asked with a smile as I took place behind my desk and joined my hands together.
“I-, “she started, hesitated and sighed loudly, shaking her head to herself.
I arched an eyebrow, curious because it wasn’t like her to act like this. It was true that our department was not exactly one for smiles and laughter. We weren’t on the maternity wing, but still, I had never seen her so troubled before. I waited patiently for her to continue.
“You have a new patient. He’s still waiting for his results and the doctors who saw him said it would be best if you were to talk to him directly.” She walked closer to my desk then and gave me the files and clipboard she had been holding on to, putting them down on my desk with shaking hands.
I slid them closer to me and started looking at the clipboard first, reading the name of the patient and his personal information.
Surname: Park Name: Yoochun Age: 18 Diagnosed with: Lymphoma
I still remember today how my eyes had widened upon reading his information. As an oncologist, I had seen young cancer patients before, but I had never treated one myself. At 29, I had been out of school for only a year and most of the patients I had were older than I was. The next thing I did then was to look at the file with his test results. I took the time to read everything and when I closed the file and looked up, I could see that Sooyun’s eyes were filled with unshed tears.
“Sooyun?” I carefully asked and then watched as she sat down in one of the chairs facing my desk and sniffed loudly to try and hold back her tears.
“He’s only eighteen years old,” she hiccupped.
“Oh Sooyun,” I said and grabbed a few tissues from the box on my desk and handed them over to her. She took them gratefully and used them to gently dab under her eyes. “Do you want me to go get him myself?” I asked, not saying anything more about the young age of my future patient because what could I possibly say about it that would make her feel better? She shook her head no and stood up, stuffing the tissues into the pocket of her uniform.
“I’ll go get him,” she announced and quietly left my office.
During her absence, I used the time to put some order in the papers on my desk and then tried to mentally prepare myself. It was never easy to announce cancer to a patient. You never knew how they were going to react. Some became violent, threatening you, saying that they would go see a better doctor, one who knew what he was talking about. Others would burst into tears, but most would usually sit there in shock. I was pulled out of my thoughts by another knock on my door and I looked up as it opened.
The first thing I noticed about Yoochun when he stepped into my office was how he seemed to disappear behind multiple layers of a knitted scarf. I stood up and smiled at him as I indicated for him to take a seat. I waited until he had flopped down onto one before sitting back down. He was wearing a tattered brown hoodie and the sleeves slipped down to his elbow when he reached up to lower his scarf, revealing a mouth with chapped lips.
“Hi, you must be Yoochun? I’m Doctor Jung Yunho,” I told him softly. I saw his eyes look me over. I knew a lot of older patients were put off by my young age as for most of them it meant I was inexperienced. The way Yoochun was looking at me though was different. It felt as if he were simply meeting a new classmate and trying to decide whether he could become friends with that person or not.
He nodded after a moment and shifted on his chair, pushing himself into a better sitting position. He coughed a few times into his scarf and I could hear the wheeze as he took deep breaths afterward. “So,” he said after a moment of silence, “do I have the flu or not? I’ve been telling my mom for the past two weeks that I just have a nasty cold, or flu whatever, but she kept worrying over me and said I should go see a doctor. You’re a doctor right? Can’t you just give me antibiotics or something so that I get better and my mom can start sleeping at night again?”
His voice was low, slightly raspy from all the coughing and there was a hint of the arrogance youth usually provides young men with, making them feel superior and at the top of their game even when they are sick. Maybe it was also a bit of pride, not wanting to appear weak in front of others. In other circumstances, it would have made me smile, but not this time.
“I wish I could do this Yoochun-sshi, but it is unfortunately not that simple,” I started to say and that caused him to huff as he leaned back against the chair, crossing his arms over his chest.
“Are you going to tell me that I need to keep enduring this and that it’s going to go away on its own?”
I took a deep breath then and looked directly into his brown orbs. “Yoochun-sshi, you don’t have the flu…” Before I could say more though, he had already cut me off.
“Really? Well that’s good news then right?” he asked me with a hopeful smile, straightening back again in his chair.
I shook my head, but didn’t lower my gaze. “It’s not the flu Yoochun-sshi, it is cancer…” I didn’t move as I waited for his reaction, but nothing prepared me to the sound of breathy laughter that suddenly filled the small space of my office.
There he was, laughing as if I had just told him the funniest thing of his life, his body leaning slightly forward as he slapped his knee a few times and then suddenly stopped as he fell into another coughing fit. He calmed down a little after that and looked back at me with amusement in his eyes.
“Very funny doc. If I had cancer, I’d know it. I mean, I would feel a bump somewhere on my body and you can be assured that I check my balls often enough that I don’t have testicular cancer and really all the symptoms I’ve been having are those of a cold, or a bad flu. No offense doc, but how were you even able to graduate school?”
“Not all cancers are so easily noticeable. Some people appear to be very healthy when they are diagnosed with cancer. Unfortunately, the symptoms you have are associated with Lymphoma and that’s why it is hard to diagnose unless the patient comes to see a doctor.” I tried to explain so that he would know that I was not joking with such a serious medical condition.
“But, I’m only eighteen years old,” he whispered after a long moment of silence.
“I know Yoochun-sshi,” I whispered back. “I know.”
++++
He didn’t cry that day, or if he did, it wasn’t in my office and so I was not aware of it. He asked me a lot of questions, the first one being if he was going to die. I told him that there were a lot of treatments available for the kind of cancer he had and that there was a chance of eventual remission. That seemed to reassure him and after discussing it some more, he left to go home, saying he would come back the next day with his mother so I could announce his cancer to her. He said he wouldn’t be able to do it alone, but he didn’t want to be admitted to the hospital right away. I understood and allowed him to leave.
I spent the rest of the day checking up on the patients I already had, but I was absent-minded. When I finally got home, I made myself a cup of tea and set it down on the corner of my desk before walking up to my bookshelves and taking a couple of thick books out, carrying them back to my desk and setting them down next to my computer. I spent the rest of the evening refreshing my memory about lymphoma.
As promised, Yoochun came back the next day with his mother. It was easy to tell from whom Yoochun got his looks. I told his mother everything I had told Yoochun the previous day and while she kept nodding at the beginning, listening to every word I said, as soon as I stopped talking, she started crying and pulled her son against her chest, holding him tightly and rocking him gently back and forth, caressing his hair and kissing the top of his head. Normally, young men Yoochun’s age would have tried to get away, but he let her hold him.
I told him that I would like to run more tests in order to have a better diagnosis of the cancer as well as figure out its stage of development so that I could then offer a better treatment plan.
++++
Yoochun was first admitted to the hospital on the sixteenth of March.
His tests results revealed that his cancer had reached stage three of development which meant that the cancer was mostly concentrated in the lymph nodes above and below his diaphragm, but thankfully, it had not yet spread further or touched any organs.
The bad news was that the treatments available were chemotherapy and biological therapy. Radiotherapy was also a possible option. I knew that all those treatments had strong side-effects and I took the time to present and discuss each option with Yoochun and his mother beforehand.
“I’ll do whatever it takes,” Yoochun had said with a light smile and a confidence that took me by surprise. “I trust you doc. I know that you’re not going to let me die that easily right? I want to fight and I don’t care if I end up with a weak body on a hospital bed, even if that happens, I’m going to keep fighting. You are going to fight with me right?”
I looked at him in silence for a minute and then found myself nodding, my lips stretching into a smile. “I’m going to be fighting at your side,” I assured him. “I’ll do everything I can to help you throughout this battle, but you will be the one doing most of the work. In order to be well-prepared for this, you will have to stop smoking, and a dietician is going to come up with a special diet plan especially suited for you.”
When I had checked his medical condition beforehand, asking him questions about his medical history and his habits, I had been informed that Yoochun had been smoking for three years now and I knew that he would have to quit cold turkey so I was wondering how he would react to this, but he seemed to understand this was unavoidable and for the best and so all he did was nod and hand me over his half-used pack of cigarettes and his lighter.
“You better get me a lot of mint gum though doc,” he told me as we walked together to the room where he was going to stay during his treatment. “Or lollipops. Am I allowed to suck on lollipops? I hope so because I’ll need something to suck on,” he continued, talking to himself although he glanced up in my direction, a wolfish grin on his face that ended up rooting me to the floor.
His bright laugher followed, echoing on the walls of the empty hallway.
The first chemotherapy treatment weakened him considerably and he spent most of his recovery time in the bathroom, unable to keep any food in his stomach. I couldn’t check up on him as often as I wanted to as I had other patients who needed my assistance and my attention, but the nurses kept me updated on his condition. It was early in the evening when I finally had the opportunity to stop by his room to personally check up on him. I knocked on his door before stepping inside, only to see him making his way back to his bed, his hospital gown looking far too big on his small frame. He looked over his shoulder at the sound of the door opening and I saw him smile.
“Oh hey doc, what’s up?” he asked as if nothing was going on. He climbed back into bed and settled himself under the blankets.
I closed the door after myself and walked closer to his bed. “How are you feeling?” I asked softly, looking at him with genuine concern, as was the case with all my patients.
“Fantastic! I’d recommend this to everyone. It’s oh so fun to puke your guts out when you’re not even drunk. At least when you drink to the point of being sick, you expect to just spend your night on a one-on-one date with lady porcelain, but this? Ungh,” he complained and huffed, blowing air up his fringe.
“There is a special medication that can help reduce those side-effects. I can prescribe it to you. I actually think it might be better if I do. It would prevent you from getting too de-hydrated and will hopefully make the treatment easier on you as well.” I moved closer to check up his temperature and listen to his heart rate, among other things.
“God that would be fantastic,” he said with a loud sigh as he tiredly closed his eyes and just followed my directives as I was checking up on him. “Doc?” he asked after a moment of silence, slowly reopening his eyes just as I was getting ready to leave his side.
“Yes Yoochun?”
I saw him open his mouth to say something, but then something passed in his eyes and he closed his mouth, probably changing his mind as to what he wanted to say and then,
“Don’t forget my mint gum?”
I knew that this wasn’t what he had originally intended to say, but I didn’t press him on it.
“I won’t,” I promised him and then readjusted his blankets, tucking him in his bed before leaving his room with a smile I hoped was reassuring and which he returned with a, ‘Thanks doc!’
+++
The following days led to weeks and then to months. During that period of time, Yoochun received more chemotherapy treatments and we found out that his body was reacting well to the treatment. He didn’t have many side effects other than trouble with his stomach, which got better after he started taking the medicine I had prescribed for him.
It’s also during those months that his personality was revealed as well, not only to me, but all the staff and the patients staying in the department of oncology.
Yoochun was someone who followed his heart and was also someone who loved flirting. The female nurses were his favourite targets, especially the younger ones, but as he would often say, he wasn’t discriminating anyone and so he was also complimenting the older ones.
I would often find the nurses at their station, a blush on their cheeks, talking about the lovely young man in room 194 and how he had noticed their new hairstyle and complimented them on it, or how he had said that one’s scent was like one of a fresh rose or how their uniform was accentuating their delicate waist.
He called them all “noona” even though I knew that he could have called them all by their names if he had wanted to. He was polite with the male nurses, and with the other doctors who were there to check up on him when I wasn’t working.
He hated staying in his room for long periods of time and would often go visit other patients, sitting on a chair by their bed and talking with them, making them laugh with his stories. I remember that I had asked him about why he was taking the time to do that and he had answered:
“Doc, some of those patients are alone. No one is coming to see them. Why would you want to fight and live when you’ve been left behind, abandoned, when it seems like no one cares about whether you live or die? I want them to know that there is someone out there who genuinely cares about them, not just because it’s their job to care you know? Not only that, but I’ve also heard that laugher is one of the best medicine and if I can help brighten up their day a little, then I will continue to do so, you know? I mean, I’m lucky because I have people who come to visit me, like my mom, my brother and my friends too, so it only seems fair…” He had shrugged his shoulders and rubbed the back of his neck.
True to his words, Yoochun refused to let himself get depressed because of his cancer. The rare times I heard him complain was because of something he had read or seen in the news, or because the hospital food was either too cold, or tasteless, or because some girl had ended up with the guy he disliked in some drama he was watching to keep himself entertained. He never complained because of his cancer. I never saw him cry either until a rainy day somewhere near the beginning of May.
The chemotherapy had finally caused his hair to start falling and clumps of it would remain either on his brush or in his fingers whenever he would run them through his brown locks. Until then, his hair had been long enough to brush against his shoulders, but he rarely let it down, keeping it pulled up into a messy ponytail with wavy strands of hair escaping the elastic and framing his face.
I saw nurses leaving his room more than once, holding their tears so as not to cry in front of him and make the whole process even more difficult for him to bear. This wasn’t exactly professional you would say, but how could they be blamed? Yoochun had become like a younger brother or a son for most of them and so they were affected by what was happening to him.
I had been standing at the nurse’s station, looking over the file of a patient I was about to go visit when I saw Yoochun’s best friend arrive and ask a nurse if it was possible for him to go visit Yoochun.
I had learned to know about Jaejoong over the time as well. He was a year older than Yoochun, but the two had apparently been inseparable since the day they had met. Jaejoong was visiting Yoochun as often as he could and was treating him like he was the most precious person in the world and I had the feeling that to Jaejoong, Yoochun was exactly that. While Yoochun reminded me of warmth, of a cozy evening spent in front of a fire, wrapped in a blanket holding on to a cup of hot chocolate, Jaejoong reminded me of cold, of days so windy that you can feel the cold all the way to your bones. I think it was because of his eyes, deep blue because of the contacts he always wore, that only seemed to soften and warm up when he was around Yoochun.
The nurse reminded him of the procedures and the allotted time period for the visit and he nodded, shaking himself and his clothes as best as he could from the rain that had clung to him on his way to the hospital. It had been a while since his last visit and I could see that he was clutching a wide bag in his left hand. He must have sensed me looking at him because he looked up and hurriedly made his way over to where I was standing, and bowed in greeting.
“How is he?” he asked me, bringing his right hand to his left arm and scratching nervously at his forearm, moving the fabric of his denim jacket back and forth.
I took a deep breath and closed the file I had been looking at, motioning for him to follow me as I started walking toward Yoochun’s room. It was in the same direction as the room of the patient I was to visit. He instantly fell into step at my side and kept staring at me, awaiting my answer.
“The cancer doesn’t seem to keep spreading so it is relatively stable which means that the treatment is working, but he recently started losing his hair,” I informed him as I stopped walking not too far away from Yoochun’s room. I saw Jaejoong’s eyes widen and his face lost some of its color. He pushed past me and I saw him disappear into his best friend’s room.
I was working the evening and night shift that day and the first time I went to check on Yoochun, I found Jaejoong sitting next to the young man, in his bed. His denim jacket had been abandoned on the chair and he had his arms wrapped around Yoochun and he was sobbing against his shoulder. Yoochun was rubbing his best friend’s back gently, holding him as tightly as he could and whispering reassuring words into his ear.
“It’s just hair Jae…it’s going to grow back…you don’t have to cry over this. When did you become such a cry-baby? You’ll be able to make fun of my forehead even more now.”
But his words just made Jaejoong cry harder. I met Yoochun’s gaze then and he mouthed at me to go.
“Are you okay?” I mouthed back and he nodded.
I nodded in return and left them alone.
The time allotted for visits had long passed when I made my second round and returned to check up on Yoochun. I thought I was going to find him asleep, but even though he was lying down on his side, his eyes were wide open and he was staring straight ahead of himself, at the empty bed next to his.
“Yoochun?” I called out softly to let him know that I was there. His eyes lost their focus on the empty bed and slowly turned in my direction and he made a move to sit up. “You can stay down if you are tired. You don’t have to sit up for me. I just came to check up on you.”
“It’s alright,” he said and continued to move until he was sitting up.
I noticed there were plastic containers on his bedside table, filled with food and I knew it was Jaejoong who had brought them for him. Yoochun’s best friend had given himself the mission of making Yoochun eat food that would be better than anything that the hospital could ever offer.
I walked closer to do my normal check up routine and as I was listening to Yoochun’s respiration and his heart, I felt his hand closing on my wrist and so I turned my head to look at him.
“Doc, can you sit with me for a moment?” he asked in a whisper and I hesitated, but Yoochun looked like he had something to say and so I made a move to go get the chair that would allow me to sit by his bed, but he tugged on my wrist and refused to let go.
We stared at each other in silence and I somehow understood his silent request and sat down on his bed, turning so that I would be able to face him. He took a deep breath, letting go of my wrist so he could clutch his bed sheets instead. He looked down and then away, avoiding to look at me directly.
“When I was a kid, my mom would always have my hair cut really short because to her it just seemed like the right thing to do. So I always had a very boyish haircut, the kind that’s like, really straight you know? Like, the kind of haircut the president’s kids would have. Anyway, I got teased a lot in school by the other kids. They thought my forehead was huge and it kind of is, but you don’t want to hear that kind of thing when you’re a kid. The first time I met Jaejoong, he had longish hair and when I asked him about why he didn’t have a regular boy haircut, he said that his sisters had long hair and he thought it was so pretty that he wanted long hair too.”
He paused for a moment then and I stayed silent, waiting for him to continue. He looked back at me and his eyes were shining, filled with unshed tears.
“I realized then that it was okay for boys to have long hair so I decided to grow mine out and whenever my mom would say that I needed a cut, I would stubbornly resist or throw a tantrum until she’d give up and let me do what I wanted with my hair. I’ve always kept my hair long ever since and Jae eventually cut his, but he said that he loved my long hair. That it suited me and he loved playing with it. Maybe I kept it long all this time because I knew he loved it…”
A strangled noise escaped his lips then and I heard him sniff loudly. I know that this is when I first broke the boundaries between a simple doctor and his patient. I shouldn’t have done what I did next, but seeing his walls start to crumble really hit me hard and I just couldn’t stay there and not do anything so I leaned forward and wrapped my arms around him, pulling him against me. I felt his arms wrap around my waist and his face pressed against my shoulder and he really started crying then, his grip tightening over the back of my uniform. I gently rubbed his back and let him cry.
“It’s s-so stupid,” he hiccupped against my shoulder. “Men should not cry like girls over their hair loss…”
“That’s not true. A lot of men care a lot about their hair. Take me for example, I’m only twenty-nine, but you should have seen me when I found a gray hair among my brown ones one morning. If you must know, and this is a secret only my best friend knows, but I just had to call him and complain about how I was too young to get a gray hair and you know what he did? He made fun of me, said it served me right for worrying too much about everything and that it was my own fault I was growing old prematurely.”
“Your best friend is kind of mean,” Yoochun said as he slightly pulled back and looked up at me, wiping at his eyes with his hands and sniffling again to try and stop his tears.
“I know right? That’s what I thought too,” I told him with a smile and gently squeezed his shoulder, not too hard because he could bruise easily now, but enough so that the gesture was reassuring, comforting. “It’s okay for you to be sad over this Yoochun. It’s okay to cry.”
He stayed silent, probably mulling over my words and he wiped his eyes until they were dry. He then leaned back against his pillows and I saw a grin slowly stretch over his lips until it was illuminating his face and there was mischief in his expression. I arched an eyebrow at the sudden change and looked at him curiously.
“Doc, did you seriously have such a strong reaction over finding a gray hair?” he asked and I noticed he was trying to hold back his laughter.
I made a show of sighing loudly, dramatizing the whole thing and turning this into a playful comedy, reaching deep within myself to pull on my actor skills. “I did,” I said as I pressed a hand against my chest and looked down, attempting to look deeply aggravated.
There was another moment of silence and then his breathy laugher filled the room and I looked up to find him rolling on his side, clutching his pillow with one hand and his stomach with the other, trying to muffle his laugher but not being able to. I smiled at the sight and stood up, replacing his blankets and making sure that he would be comfortable for the night.
I was almost at the door when his next words reached my ears.
“Thank you, Yunho-sshi.”
+++
On the fourth of June, Yoochun turned nineteen years old.
I had first thought that he would probably just end up celebrating it with his family, in a calm environment so as not to bring too much attention to it, but it didn’t take long for me to realize how wrong I had been in my assumptions. A few weeks before the actual date, he received a lot of visits from Jaejoong and from some of his other friends. About a week and a half before, Yoochun asked me if it were possible for him to leave the hospital just for a day so he could celebrate with his family and friends. I hesitated, but when I saw that his condition was relatively stable, I allowed it.
I received the invitation a few days after I had given him my authorization to leave. It was brought to me by Sooyun who was trying to hold back her laughter as she handed me a green envelope. It turned out that the source of her amusement was the card inside the envelope. It was in the shape of a cat, but a very zombiefied cat. It was quite gruesome and the back of the card held information about the place of the birthday party as well as the time and to please provide an RSVP as soon as possible. Sooyun had also received an invitation, and we both decided we would attend.
To this day, I still don’t know who planned the whole thing, but I believe that person deserves an award for party planning.
The venue looked abandoned from the outside, but inside it resembled a gymnasium except without the gym equipment. There were tables placed in half a circle facing a small stage. The whole room looked taken straight out of a zombie movie. The cloths covering the tables were ripped in places and looked slightly burned in others. Yoochun was sitting at the main table with his mother and his brother. Some of his friends had already arrived and were sitting at their assigned places. It hadn’t been indicated on the invitation to dress up in costume, but some people were wearing adorable costumes with horrible zombie makeup. I was fascinated.
Yoochun’s face lit up when he spotted Sooyun and I and he made his way over to us, giving each of us a tight hug before grabbing our hands and leading us to our places. It somehow made me feel like I was eighteen all over again.
The ice cubes in our drinks had the shape of brains and the food looked taken straight out from Martha Stewart’s Halloween menu. During the meal, I saw Yoochun leave the table on more than one occasion. His face would turn pale and he would suddenly stand up and hurry to the bathroom, but he would always return with a smile on his face and pretend like nothing had happened, but those of us who knew of his condition knew that just the smell or sight of certain foods was enough to make him sick now. He refused to let his cancer ruin his birthday, though.
After we finished eating, some of his friends gave speeches. They talked about how happy they were to be friends with Yoochun and how, according to them, he was turning into an old man. Some of them attempted to share embarrassing stories about him, but Yoochun was quick to make them stop talking, much to my amusement and his mother’s dismay.
The presents came next. He received CDs from his favourite bands, a new pair of headphones, gift certificates etc. He even received a sex toy from a boy who erupted in laughter upon seeing the look on Yoochun’s ace after he opened his present and saw what was in the box. His cheeks and ears turned pink and he stammered some words out, before calling out the boy’s name in disbelief, and his friend just laughed in pure delight. I couldn’t help but laugh as well, if only because of Yoochun’s reaction and his friend’s contagious laughter.
I noticed he didn’t receive anything from his mother, his brother or from Jaejoong and I wondered if it was because they were planning on giving him something later when they would be alone with Yoochun or if they had simply not bought him anything.
I had bought something for him and I gave it to him with a shy smile and he looked at me in surprise. Obviously, he had not expected to receive something from me. He unwrapped it eagerly and his mouth dropped open when he saw what it was.
“Yunho wha- I can’t accept this! It’s too much!” he exclaimed, looking up at me with wide eyes. I shook my head and smiled to confirm that this wasn’t too much.
“I heard you talk about that opera so much and recently heard that it would be coming to town so I bought you a pair of tickets. You can go with Jaejoong if you’d like.”
“But it’s not just regular tickets! Yunho, it says VIP here,” he continued, shoving the tickets right in front of my eyes so I would see what was written on them even though I already knew, seeing as I had bought them myself.
“Of course it says VIP. I got you the best places in the entire amphitheatre. And before you protest again, just know that I didn’t ruin myself buying these for you. But I will have to eat ramen for a month in order to save money again,” I teased him with a grin.
He stared at the tickets again and then he moved to hug me tightly and whispered a ‘thank you’ into my ear.
That day, I went home with butterflies in my stomach and a leftover piece of birthday cake.
Part 2
Author: darkcupcakes
Pairing/Focus: Yunho/Yoochun, written from Yunho's POV
Rating: PG-13
Final word count: 14,197
Summary: Yunho goes back into his souvenirs and relates the story of how he met Yoochun, how he came to lose him and how life sometimes as a funny way of making you believe that everything is interconnected, and that it might be possible that everything happens for a reason, whether you ever end up knowing what that reason is or not.
Warning: This is a very sad fic. The death of one of the characters is basically the base of this story.
------
I remember it as if it were yesterday. I was standing in front of the window in my office, letting the rays of sunshine warm the skin of my face, thinking about how it seemed like spring was finally at our door. I could see tiny dots moving, multiples levels down from where I was, people coming and going, some probably filled with hope, others possibly with fear. I could tell the air outside was still chilly as I could see the trees move with the wind. It was on that beautiful spring morning that I met Yoochun.
There had been a knock on my door before it opened and I saw Sooyun’s head peek inside as I turned away from the window and looked in her direction. Sooyun was a nurse in our department, and also a childhood friend of mine, and she was known for her bright smile and her gentle care with patients. Everyone loved her. I motioned for her to come in and she straightened up before pushing the door further open and bowing her head in greeting. She was clutching a clipboard and files, keeping them pressed to her chest.
“Good morning Yunho-sshi,” she said, and stayed rooted to her spot.
“Good morning Sooyun, what can I do for you today?” I asked with a smile as I took place behind my desk and joined my hands together.
“I-, “she started, hesitated and sighed loudly, shaking her head to herself.
I arched an eyebrow, curious because it wasn’t like her to act like this. It was true that our department was not exactly one for smiles and laughter. We weren’t on the maternity wing, but still, I had never seen her so troubled before. I waited patiently for her to continue.
“You have a new patient. He’s still waiting for his results and the doctors who saw him said it would be best if you were to talk to him directly.” She walked closer to my desk then and gave me the files and clipboard she had been holding on to, putting them down on my desk with shaking hands.
I slid them closer to me and started looking at the clipboard first, reading the name of the patient and his personal information.
Surname: Park Name: Yoochun Age: 18 Diagnosed with: Lymphoma
I still remember today how my eyes had widened upon reading his information. As an oncologist, I had seen young cancer patients before, but I had never treated one myself. At 29, I had been out of school for only a year and most of the patients I had were older than I was. The next thing I did then was to look at the file with his test results. I took the time to read everything and when I closed the file and looked up, I could see that Sooyun’s eyes were filled with unshed tears.
“Sooyun?” I carefully asked and then watched as she sat down in one of the chairs facing my desk and sniffed loudly to try and hold back her tears.
“He’s only eighteen years old,” she hiccupped.
“Oh Sooyun,” I said and grabbed a few tissues from the box on my desk and handed them over to her. She took them gratefully and used them to gently dab under her eyes. “Do you want me to go get him myself?” I asked, not saying anything more about the young age of my future patient because what could I possibly say about it that would make her feel better? She shook her head no and stood up, stuffing the tissues into the pocket of her uniform.
“I’ll go get him,” she announced and quietly left my office.
During her absence, I used the time to put some order in the papers on my desk and then tried to mentally prepare myself. It was never easy to announce cancer to a patient. You never knew how they were going to react. Some became violent, threatening you, saying that they would go see a better doctor, one who knew what he was talking about. Others would burst into tears, but most would usually sit there in shock. I was pulled out of my thoughts by another knock on my door and I looked up as it opened.
The first thing I noticed about Yoochun when he stepped into my office was how he seemed to disappear behind multiple layers of a knitted scarf. I stood up and smiled at him as I indicated for him to take a seat. I waited until he had flopped down onto one before sitting back down. He was wearing a tattered brown hoodie and the sleeves slipped down to his elbow when he reached up to lower his scarf, revealing a mouth with chapped lips.
“Hi, you must be Yoochun? I’m Doctor Jung Yunho,” I told him softly. I saw his eyes look me over. I knew a lot of older patients were put off by my young age as for most of them it meant I was inexperienced. The way Yoochun was looking at me though was different. It felt as if he were simply meeting a new classmate and trying to decide whether he could become friends with that person or not.
He nodded after a moment and shifted on his chair, pushing himself into a better sitting position. He coughed a few times into his scarf and I could hear the wheeze as he took deep breaths afterward. “So,” he said after a moment of silence, “do I have the flu or not? I’ve been telling my mom for the past two weeks that I just have a nasty cold, or flu whatever, but she kept worrying over me and said I should go see a doctor. You’re a doctor right? Can’t you just give me antibiotics or something so that I get better and my mom can start sleeping at night again?”
His voice was low, slightly raspy from all the coughing and there was a hint of the arrogance youth usually provides young men with, making them feel superior and at the top of their game even when they are sick. Maybe it was also a bit of pride, not wanting to appear weak in front of others. In other circumstances, it would have made me smile, but not this time.
“I wish I could do this Yoochun-sshi, but it is unfortunately not that simple,” I started to say and that caused him to huff as he leaned back against the chair, crossing his arms over his chest.
“Are you going to tell me that I need to keep enduring this and that it’s going to go away on its own?”
I took a deep breath then and looked directly into his brown orbs. “Yoochun-sshi, you don’t have the flu…” Before I could say more though, he had already cut me off.
“Really? Well that’s good news then right?” he asked me with a hopeful smile, straightening back again in his chair.
I shook my head, but didn’t lower my gaze. “It’s not the flu Yoochun-sshi, it is cancer…” I didn’t move as I waited for his reaction, but nothing prepared me to the sound of breathy laughter that suddenly filled the small space of my office.
There he was, laughing as if I had just told him the funniest thing of his life, his body leaning slightly forward as he slapped his knee a few times and then suddenly stopped as he fell into another coughing fit. He calmed down a little after that and looked back at me with amusement in his eyes.
“Very funny doc. If I had cancer, I’d know it. I mean, I would feel a bump somewhere on my body and you can be assured that I check my balls often enough that I don’t have testicular cancer and really all the symptoms I’ve been having are those of a cold, or a bad flu. No offense doc, but how were you even able to graduate school?”
“Not all cancers are so easily noticeable. Some people appear to be very healthy when they are diagnosed with cancer. Unfortunately, the symptoms you have are associated with Lymphoma and that’s why it is hard to diagnose unless the patient comes to see a doctor.” I tried to explain so that he would know that I was not joking with such a serious medical condition.
“But, I’m only eighteen years old,” he whispered after a long moment of silence.
“I know Yoochun-sshi,” I whispered back. “I know.”
++++
He didn’t cry that day, or if he did, it wasn’t in my office and so I was not aware of it. He asked me a lot of questions, the first one being if he was going to die. I told him that there were a lot of treatments available for the kind of cancer he had and that there was a chance of eventual remission. That seemed to reassure him and after discussing it some more, he left to go home, saying he would come back the next day with his mother so I could announce his cancer to her. He said he wouldn’t be able to do it alone, but he didn’t want to be admitted to the hospital right away. I understood and allowed him to leave.
I spent the rest of the day checking up on the patients I already had, but I was absent-minded. When I finally got home, I made myself a cup of tea and set it down on the corner of my desk before walking up to my bookshelves and taking a couple of thick books out, carrying them back to my desk and setting them down next to my computer. I spent the rest of the evening refreshing my memory about lymphoma.
As promised, Yoochun came back the next day with his mother. It was easy to tell from whom Yoochun got his looks. I told his mother everything I had told Yoochun the previous day and while she kept nodding at the beginning, listening to every word I said, as soon as I stopped talking, she started crying and pulled her son against her chest, holding him tightly and rocking him gently back and forth, caressing his hair and kissing the top of his head. Normally, young men Yoochun’s age would have tried to get away, but he let her hold him.
I told him that I would like to run more tests in order to have a better diagnosis of the cancer as well as figure out its stage of development so that I could then offer a better treatment plan.
++++
Yoochun was first admitted to the hospital on the sixteenth of March.
His tests results revealed that his cancer had reached stage three of development which meant that the cancer was mostly concentrated in the lymph nodes above and below his diaphragm, but thankfully, it had not yet spread further or touched any organs.
The bad news was that the treatments available were chemotherapy and biological therapy. Radiotherapy was also a possible option. I knew that all those treatments had strong side-effects and I took the time to present and discuss each option with Yoochun and his mother beforehand.
“I’ll do whatever it takes,” Yoochun had said with a light smile and a confidence that took me by surprise. “I trust you doc. I know that you’re not going to let me die that easily right? I want to fight and I don’t care if I end up with a weak body on a hospital bed, even if that happens, I’m going to keep fighting. You are going to fight with me right?”
I looked at him in silence for a minute and then found myself nodding, my lips stretching into a smile. “I’m going to be fighting at your side,” I assured him. “I’ll do everything I can to help you throughout this battle, but you will be the one doing most of the work. In order to be well-prepared for this, you will have to stop smoking, and a dietician is going to come up with a special diet plan especially suited for you.”
When I had checked his medical condition beforehand, asking him questions about his medical history and his habits, I had been informed that Yoochun had been smoking for three years now and I knew that he would have to quit cold turkey so I was wondering how he would react to this, but he seemed to understand this was unavoidable and for the best and so all he did was nod and hand me over his half-used pack of cigarettes and his lighter.
“You better get me a lot of mint gum though doc,” he told me as we walked together to the room where he was going to stay during his treatment. “Or lollipops. Am I allowed to suck on lollipops? I hope so because I’ll need something to suck on,” he continued, talking to himself although he glanced up in my direction, a wolfish grin on his face that ended up rooting me to the floor.
His bright laugher followed, echoing on the walls of the empty hallway.
The first chemotherapy treatment weakened him considerably and he spent most of his recovery time in the bathroom, unable to keep any food in his stomach. I couldn’t check up on him as often as I wanted to as I had other patients who needed my assistance and my attention, but the nurses kept me updated on his condition. It was early in the evening when I finally had the opportunity to stop by his room to personally check up on him. I knocked on his door before stepping inside, only to see him making his way back to his bed, his hospital gown looking far too big on his small frame. He looked over his shoulder at the sound of the door opening and I saw him smile.
“Oh hey doc, what’s up?” he asked as if nothing was going on. He climbed back into bed and settled himself under the blankets.
I closed the door after myself and walked closer to his bed. “How are you feeling?” I asked softly, looking at him with genuine concern, as was the case with all my patients.
“Fantastic! I’d recommend this to everyone. It’s oh so fun to puke your guts out when you’re not even drunk. At least when you drink to the point of being sick, you expect to just spend your night on a one-on-one date with lady porcelain, but this? Ungh,” he complained and huffed, blowing air up his fringe.
“There is a special medication that can help reduce those side-effects. I can prescribe it to you. I actually think it might be better if I do. It would prevent you from getting too de-hydrated and will hopefully make the treatment easier on you as well.” I moved closer to check up his temperature and listen to his heart rate, among other things.
“God that would be fantastic,” he said with a loud sigh as he tiredly closed his eyes and just followed my directives as I was checking up on him. “Doc?” he asked after a moment of silence, slowly reopening his eyes just as I was getting ready to leave his side.
“Yes Yoochun?”
I saw him open his mouth to say something, but then something passed in his eyes and he closed his mouth, probably changing his mind as to what he wanted to say and then,
“Don’t forget my mint gum?”
I knew that this wasn’t what he had originally intended to say, but I didn’t press him on it.
“I won’t,” I promised him and then readjusted his blankets, tucking him in his bed before leaving his room with a smile I hoped was reassuring and which he returned with a, ‘Thanks doc!’
+++
The following days led to weeks and then to months. During that period of time, Yoochun received more chemotherapy treatments and we found out that his body was reacting well to the treatment. He didn’t have many side effects other than trouble with his stomach, which got better after he started taking the medicine I had prescribed for him.
It’s also during those months that his personality was revealed as well, not only to me, but all the staff and the patients staying in the department of oncology.
Yoochun was someone who followed his heart and was also someone who loved flirting. The female nurses were his favourite targets, especially the younger ones, but as he would often say, he wasn’t discriminating anyone and so he was also complimenting the older ones.
I would often find the nurses at their station, a blush on their cheeks, talking about the lovely young man in room 194 and how he had noticed their new hairstyle and complimented them on it, or how he had said that one’s scent was like one of a fresh rose or how their uniform was accentuating their delicate waist.
He called them all “noona” even though I knew that he could have called them all by their names if he had wanted to. He was polite with the male nurses, and with the other doctors who were there to check up on him when I wasn’t working.
He hated staying in his room for long periods of time and would often go visit other patients, sitting on a chair by their bed and talking with them, making them laugh with his stories. I remember that I had asked him about why he was taking the time to do that and he had answered:
“Doc, some of those patients are alone. No one is coming to see them. Why would you want to fight and live when you’ve been left behind, abandoned, when it seems like no one cares about whether you live or die? I want them to know that there is someone out there who genuinely cares about them, not just because it’s their job to care you know? Not only that, but I’ve also heard that laugher is one of the best medicine and if I can help brighten up their day a little, then I will continue to do so, you know? I mean, I’m lucky because I have people who come to visit me, like my mom, my brother and my friends too, so it only seems fair…” He had shrugged his shoulders and rubbed the back of his neck.
True to his words, Yoochun refused to let himself get depressed because of his cancer. The rare times I heard him complain was because of something he had read or seen in the news, or because the hospital food was either too cold, or tasteless, or because some girl had ended up with the guy he disliked in some drama he was watching to keep himself entertained. He never complained because of his cancer. I never saw him cry either until a rainy day somewhere near the beginning of May.
The chemotherapy had finally caused his hair to start falling and clumps of it would remain either on his brush or in his fingers whenever he would run them through his brown locks. Until then, his hair had been long enough to brush against his shoulders, but he rarely let it down, keeping it pulled up into a messy ponytail with wavy strands of hair escaping the elastic and framing his face.
I saw nurses leaving his room more than once, holding their tears so as not to cry in front of him and make the whole process even more difficult for him to bear. This wasn’t exactly professional you would say, but how could they be blamed? Yoochun had become like a younger brother or a son for most of them and so they were affected by what was happening to him.
I had been standing at the nurse’s station, looking over the file of a patient I was about to go visit when I saw Yoochun’s best friend arrive and ask a nurse if it was possible for him to go visit Yoochun.
I had learned to know about Jaejoong over the time as well. He was a year older than Yoochun, but the two had apparently been inseparable since the day they had met. Jaejoong was visiting Yoochun as often as he could and was treating him like he was the most precious person in the world and I had the feeling that to Jaejoong, Yoochun was exactly that. While Yoochun reminded me of warmth, of a cozy evening spent in front of a fire, wrapped in a blanket holding on to a cup of hot chocolate, Jaejoong reminded me of cold, of days so windy that you can feel the cold all the way to your bones. I think it was because of his eyes, deep blue because of the contacts he always wore, that only seemed to soften and warm up when he was around Yoochun.
The nurse reminded him of the procedures and the allotted time period for the visit and he nodded, shaking himself and his clothes as best as he could from the rain that had clung to him on his way to the hospital. It had been a while since his last visit and I could see that he was clutching a wide bag in his left hand. He must have sensed me looking at him because he looked up and hurriedly made his way over to where I was standing, and bowed in greeting.
“How is he?” he asked me, bringing his right hand to his left arm and scratching nervously at his forearm, moving the fabric of his denim jacket back and forth.
I took a deep breath and closed the file I had been looking at, motioning for him to follow me as I started walking toward Yoochun’s room. It was in the same direction as the room of the patient I was to visit. He instantly fell into step at my side and kept staring at me, awaiting my answer.
“The cancer doesn’t seem to keep spreading so it is relatively stable which means that the treatment is working, but he recently started losing his hair,” I informed him as I stopped walking not too far away from Yoochun’s room. I saw Jaejoong’s eyes widen and his face lost some of its color. He pushed past me and I saw him disappear into his best friend’s room.
I was working the evening and night shift that day and the first time I went to check on Yoochun, I found Jaejoong sitting next to the young man, in his bed. His denim jacket had been abandoned on the chair and he had his arms wrapped around Yoochun and he was sobbing against his shoulder. Yoochun was rubbing his best friend’s back gently, holding him as tightly as he could and whispering reassuring words into his ear.
“It’s just hair Jae…it’s going to grow back…you don’t have to cry over this. When did you become such a cry-baby? You’ll be able to make fun of my forehead even more now.”
But his words just made Jaejoong cry harder. I met Yoochun’s gaze then and he mouthed at me to go.
“Are you okay?” I mouthed back and he nodded.
I nodded in return and left them alone.
The time allotted for visits had long passed when I made my second round and returned to check up on Yoochun. I thought I was going to find him asleep, but even though he was lying down on his side, his eyes were wide open and he was staring straight ahead of himself, at the empty bed next to his.
“Yoochun?” I called out softly to let him know that I was there. His eyes lost their focus on the empty bed and slowly turned in my direction and he made a move to sit up. “You can stay down if you are tired. You don’t have to sit up for me. I just came to check up on you.”
“It’s alright,” he said and continued to move until he was sitting up.
I noticed there were plastic containers on his bedside table, filled with food and I knew it was Jaejoong who had brought them for him. Yoochun’s best friend had given himself the mission of making Yoochun eat food that would be better than anything that the hospital could ever offer.
I walked closer to do my normal check up routine and as I was listening to Yoochun’s respiration and his heart, I felt his hand closing on my wrist and so I turned my head to look at him.
“Doc, can you sit with me for a moment?” he asked in a whisper and I hesitated, but Yoochun looked like he had something to say and so I made a move to go get the chair that would allow me to sit by his bed, but he tugged on my wrist and refused to let go.
We stared at each other in silence and I somehow understood his silent request and sat down on his bed, turning so that I would be able to face him. He took a deep breath, letting go of my wrist so he could clutch his bed sheets instead. He looked down and then away, avoiding to look at me directly.
“When I was a kid, my mom would always have my hair cut really short because to her it just seemed like the right thing to do. So I always had a very boyish haircut, the kind that’s like, really straight you know? Like, the kind of haircut the president’s kids would have. Anyway, I got teased a lot in school by the other kids. They thought my forehead was huge and it kind of is, but you don’t want to hear that kind of thing when you’re a kid. The first time I met Jaejoong, he had longish hair and when I asked him about why he didn’t have a regular boy haircut, he said that his sisters had long hair and he thought it was so pretty that he wanted long hair too.”
He paused for a moment then and I stayed silent, waiting for him to continue. He looked back at me and his eyes were shining, filled with unshed tears.
“I realized then that it was okay for boys to have long hair so I decided to grow mine out and whenever my mom would say that I needed a cut, I would stubbornly resist or throw a tantrum until she’d give up and let me do what I wanted with my hair. I’ve always kept my hair long ever since and Jae eventually cut his, but he said that he loved my long hair. That it suited me and he loved playing with it. Maybe I kept it long all this time because I knew he loved it…”
A strangled noise escaped his lips then and I heard him sniff loudly. I know that this is when I first broke the boundaries between a simple doctor and his patient. I shouldn’t have done what I did next, but seeing his walls start to crumble really hit me hard and I just couldn’t stay there and not do anything so I leaned forward and wrapped my arms around him, pulling him against me. I felt his arms wrap around my waist and his face pressed against my shoulder and he really started crying then, his grip tightening over the back of my uniform. I gently rubbed his back and let him cry.
“It’s s-so stupid,” he hiccupped against my shoulder. “Men should not cry like girls over their hair loss…”
“That’s not true. A lot of men care a lot about their hair. Take me for example, I’m only twenty-nine, but you should have seen me when I found a gray hair among my brown ones one morning. If you must know, and this is a secret only my best friend knows, but I just had to call him and complain about how I was too young to get a gray hair and you know what he did? He made fun of me, said it served me right for worrying too much about everything and that it was my own fault I was growing old prematurely.”
“Your best friend is kind of mean,” Yoochun said as he slightly pulled back and looked up at me, wiping at his eyes with his hands and sniffling again to try and stop his tears.
“I know right? That’s what I thought too,” I told him with a smile and gently squeezed his shoulder, not too hard because he could bruise easily now, but enough so that the gesture was reassuring, comforting. “It’s okay for you to be sad over this Yoochun. It’s okay to cry.”
He stayed silent, probably mulling over my words and he wiped his eyes until they were dry. He then leaned back against his pillows and I saw a grin slowly stretch over his lips until it was illuminating his face and there was mischief in his expression. I arched an eyebrow at the sudden change and looked at him curiously.
“Doc, did you seriously have such a strong reaction over finding a gray hair?” he asked and I noticed he was trying to hold back his laughter.
I made a show of sighing loudly, dramatizing the whole thing and turning this into a playful comedy, reaching deep within myself to pull on my actor skills. “I did,” I said as I pressed a hand against my chest and looked down, attempting to look deeply aggravated.
There was another moment of silence and then his breathy laugher filled the room and I looked up to find him rolling on his side, clutching his pillow with one hand and his stomach with the other, trying to muffle his laugher but not being able to. I smiled at the sight and stood up, replacing his blankets and making sure that he would be comfortable for the night.
I was almost at the door when his next words reached my ears.
“Thank you, Yunho-sshi.”
+++
On the fourth of June, Yoochun turned nineteen years old.
I had first thought that he would probably just end up celebrating it with his family, in a calm environment so as not to bring too much attention to it, but it didn’t take long for me to realize how wrong I had been in my assumptions. A few weeks before the actual date, he received a lot of visits from Jaejoong and from some of his other friends. About a week and a half before, Yoochun asked me if it were possible for him to leave the hospital just for a day so he could celebrate with his family and friends. I hesitated, but when I saw that his condition was relatively stable, I allowed it.
I received the invitation a few days after I had given him my authorization to leave. It was brought to me by Sooyun who was trying to hold back her laughter as she handed me a green envelope. It turned out that the source of her amusement was the card inside the envelope. It was in the shape of a cat, but a very zombiefied cat. It was quite gruesome and the back of the card held information about the place of the birthday party as well as the time and to please provide an RSVP as soon as possible. Sooyun had also received an invitation, and we both decided we would attend.
To this day, I still don’t know who planned the whole thing, but I believe that person deserves an award for party planning.
The venue looked abandoned from the outside, but inside it resembled a gymnasium except without the gym equipment. There were tables placed in half a circle facing a small stage. The whole room looked taken straight out of a zombie movie. The cloths covering the tables were ripped in places and looked slightly burned in others. Yoochun was sitting at the main table with his mother and his brother. Some of his friends had already arrived and were sitting at their assigned places. It hadn’t been indicated on the invitation to dress up in costume, but some people were wearing adorable costumes with horrible zombie makeup. I was fascinated.
Yoochun’s face lit up when he spotted Sooyun and I and he made his way over to us, giving each of us a tight hug before grabbing our hands and leading us to our places. It somehow made me feel like I was eighteen all over again.
The ice cubes in our drinks had the shape of brains and the food looked taken straight out from Martha Stewart’s Halloween menu. During the meal, I saw Yoochun leave the table on more than one occasion. His face would turn pale and he would suddenly stand up and hurry to the bathroom, but he would always return with a smile on his face and pretend like nothing had happened, but those of us who knew of his condition knew that just the smell or sight of certain foods was enough to make him sick now. He refused to let his cancer ruin his birthday, though.
After we finished eating, some of his friends gave speeches. They talked about how happy they were to be friends with Yoochun and how, according to them, he was turning into an old man. Some of them attempted to share embarrassing stories about him, but Yoochun was quick to make them stop talking, much to my amusement and his mother’s dismay.
The presents came next. He received CDs from his favourite bands, a new pair of headphones, gift certificates etc. He even received a sex toy from a boy who erupted in laughter upon seeing the look on Yoochun’s ace after he opened his present and saw what was in the box. His cheeks and ears turned pink and he stammered some words out, before calling out the boy’s name in disbelief, and his friend just laughed in pure delight. I couldn’t help but laugh as well, if only because of Yoochun’s reaction and his friend’s contagious laughter.
I noticed he didn’t receive anything from his mother, his brother or from Jaejoong and I wondered if it was because they were planning on giving him something later when they would be alone with Yoochun or if they had simply not bought him anything.
I had bought something for him and I gave it to him with a shy smile and he looked at me in surprise. Obviously, he had not expected to receive something from me. He unwrapped it eagerly and his mouth dropped open when he saw what it was.
“Yunho wha- I can’t accept this! It’s too much!” he exclaimed, looking up at me with wide eyes. I shook my head and smiled to confirm that this wasn’t too much.
“I heard you talk about that opera so much and recently heard that it would be coming to town so I bought you a pair of tickets. You can go with Jaejoong if you’d like.”
“But it’s not just regular tickets! Yunho, it says VIP here,” he continued, shoving the tickets right in front of my eyes so I would see what was written on them even though I already knew, seeing as I had bought them myself.
“Of course it says VIP. I got you the best places in the entire amphitheatre. And before you protest again, just know that I didn’t ruin myself buying these for you. But I will have to eat ramen for a month in order to save money again,” I teased him with a grin.
He stared at the tickets again and then he moved to hug me tightly and whispered a ‘thank you’ into my ear.
That day, I went home with butterflies in my stomach and a leftover piece of birthday cake.
Part 2