The day I rescued you and everything changed (TxT's Soobin Fanfiction)

Chapter 2: I started to understand you

--- Flashback ---

Every day I sat at the same spot at the same exact time, watching the first train pass by, waiting for the second one. Every day I saw it arriving, saw people getting on, others getting off. Saw people staring at me weirdly. But I didn't really pay attention to anything. Every day I got off work perfectly on time after being polite and happy around the others, trying to not let the empty shell I was by then already show towards the customers. Every day I went home to put down my bag, got the recent book and wasted no time in getting to the train station, always too early. Every day I let one train pass me by even though it didn't make sense. But I never felt ready to take that one in the beginning and later on it didn't feel right to change it. I needed those moments of just sitting there, staring into nothingness, preparing myself for what I was about to face.

My train came and I got up, entered and sat down on the same spot as always. If it wasn't occupied. If it was, it made me feel uneasy and I just kept standing around awkwardly. But it seemed like the ones around me somehow started to accept that this was my seat. I stared out of the window, not realizing the landscape that flew by. The book lay in my lap and my hands were clutching onto it. But I never read during the 40 minutes of my train ride. Never.

I left the train again, my feet automatically taking the right direction. I went through the big automatic doors of the building I spent every evening in. The employees knew me. They greeted me with a warm smile and I could tell they felt sorry for me. I returned the greeting politely. Once someone had asked me how I could go on like this every day. I had just shrugged and told him that I would use every single second that was left and afterwards – we would see about that. My feet got heavier with every step I took, almost unbearingly heavy whenever I took the last set of stairs. I never used the elevator. It brought me to my destiny to fast.

And every day at the same time, I stood in front of the same door again. Room 505. I knocked, waited for him to call me inside, put on a happy smile and entered, welcomed by the never-changing surroundings. A single bed, a shelf, the door to the bathroom and a bedside table. Everything in that hygienic, uncomfortable, almost blindingly bright white. Except for the flowers on the bedside table that I always sent from work, new ones every week.

Minhyuk lay in the hospital bed, attached to all those medical things I didn't understand. Every day he greeted me with a bright, heart-warming smile, even though both of us knew that time was ticking. We sometimes talked about it and he told me to not be sad when he was gone; when the cancer would finally make his body give up fully. I had been angry, desperate, I had begged and bawled my eyes out until no resistance was left in me anymore and I just gave up trying to change the unchangeable. I had come to accept our fate. And so, I came here every day instead, a book with me, and sat next to him. Told him about my day, asked him which flowers I should arrange for the next week, asked him what I could do for him. The first year we sometimes were outside together, enjoying the fresh air. But when the days came that he just wanted to stay in bed and sleep all day, even I couldn't ignore how he didn't get better but worse every day. Wasn't a hospital supposed to make someone healthy instead of watching him die?

I was just glad the employees here were nice to him. And that we still could afford having him stay here. As much as I would have wanted him to return to our home because it just didn't feel like home without him, I knew that it was better for him to stay here. And he knew too. He would immediately get help here if needed, he was taken care of and sometimes someone would visit him except me while if he would be home, he would probably have been alone the whole day, having to call me whenever he would need something urgently. I then would have needed to run home which would take me at least fifteen minutes, no matter how hard I ran.

And after exchanging the usual trivial chatter, we sometimes would start getting into deep talk and he told me all the things I should do to enjoy my life. He would tell me to not visit him every day and I would scold him for not allowing me to stay with him for the rest of the time we still had. We sometimes would just hold each other's hands, crying together but also comforted in the other one's presence. And sometimes we would just skip that, knowing that one of us didn't have the strength to face the truth today and instead pretend like all of this would be over soon. We planned our future house, the names for our children, our garden and where we would go for vacation, secretly hoping for a miracle to happen.

In the end, I would always take the book I had with me and would read a chapter for him, kiss him goodbye and promise to be back tomorrow. I would go back to the train station at the exact same time, emotionless, get on the exact same train, sit in the exact same place and get off again 40 minutes later, walk back to the apartment that once held an us and now felt empty. I would cook something for dinner and maybe watch something unimportant on TV before changing into my pyjamas and cry myself to sleep. Or I would call my cousin to let everything out. Or maybe I already was too worn out to even cry or call and just black out immediately, knowing but denying the fact that everything started from the beginning again tomorrow, like an endless, cruel loop I was caught in.

That's all I did for two damn long years. Until it all changed so fast. I always thought I would be ready for it. But I wasn't at all when the call came. And then I suddenly had no reason to go to the hospital every day. The last time I had with Minhyuk was his funeral. We didn't even finish the most recent book the day before he died. And I couldn't read it without him. He had told me to find happiness again, live my life for him because he would wait for me in heaven. He told me to marry someone else, get a lot of kids and visit all the places I wanted to go to. So, I tried. But I felt how something was missing. As he died, he took a piece of me with him, something I wouldn't ever get back. And now I still tried to find back into my life with that piece – and him – missing. I just haven't quite found out how until now. It's been exactly one year now and I am still grieving, refusing all the help my cousin or others offered and instead pretend to be okay. I know I am stupid for doing this, but I just can't get myself to change it. What even is the purpose of life if it's a life without him?

--- End of flashback ---