Six months to live (ZhanYi)

17

One week. Only one full week until Zhan is gone, and it's killing Yibo. It's ripping him apart and there's nothing at all that can help him. He hates it. He hates this so much.

He hates waking up in the morning. He hates eating. He hates watching tv. He hates showering. He hates going to sleep. He hates everything because he knows that in one week he has to do it all without Zhan.

No, Zhan doesn't live with him anymore but he's still there. He exists. But he won't in a week. He'll be gone, totally gone.

The pit in his stomach had only grown and now it's almost as if it's all that he is. Just this void. He feels so lifeless and unmotivated to do anything. Even the simplest things. He's so incredibly sad that he feels that's all that defines him.

Time has never gone this fast. That's always how it is, though. Anytime it's supposed to go fast it goes slow and vise versa. Yibo knows that the day will be here sooner than he could imagine and he has no clue what he's going to do.

You can't stop time. You can't just press pause and hope that it can stay that way forever. Time doesn't even exist really. Once that day comes, it'll feel like the moments leading up never even happened.

It will all just be a memory and that breaks him. The fact that it'll all be memories. That's how life is, memories themselves aren't sad, no. What's sad is that's all that will be left. There won't be any time left to make more. There won't be any more 'right now.' There will only be 'I remember when.'

One thing Yibo is thankful for is that he gets to see Zhan. At least there's that. At least there won't be a day he won't get to spend at least some of his time with Zhan before there aren't any more opportunities in the first place.

He has a plan. One that might be hard to execute but he's going to try. He has to. Yibo wants to give Zhan one more day to be "Normal" To get to do normal things and experience real life. Just one more time.

He's not sure how to go about it but he's going to talk to Mr. Lee because if there's anyway, he's going to try. He won't let Zhan die with the prison being his last memories for the last six years. He called Mr. Han to come and take him to prison earlier before he will see Zhan.

"Mr. Lee, do you think there's anyway I could get Zhan out of prison for a day."

Mr. Lee gives him a confused look. "Legally I mean," he adds.

"I'm not sure, son. Maybe. You'd have to talk to his case manager and his lawyer. You'd need a legit reason. They won't just let you take him."

"What's a legit reason though? I don't know if it's the same but on Orange Is The New Black, the show I watch, it takes forever to get things like that processed."

"It does. But you might have time. I can do what I can but I don't want you to get your hopes up. One of my friends who works in the department handles those things so maybe he can find a way to make it work." Mr. Lee says.

Yibo could tell that he felt bad. He wanted to help as much as he could. He knew how hard it was, losing his wife wasn't any different than Yibo losing Zhan.

"Okay, thank you so much. I just-I want him to have one day. One day to do whatever he wants. He doesn't deserve any of this. The least I could do is try and make it happen for him."

Mr. Lee nods. "I understand. It's almost harder when you know someone is going to be gone. I guess it's harder to cope with sudden loss but there's no slow burn of dread."

Yibo didn't really know how to put it in to words before Mr. Lee said it but that's exactly right. He's not so sure about the coping thing, though. Losing someone, no matter how it happens, is hard to deal
with.