WITHOUT YOU ||Vmin ff

CHAPTER 20

He had leukemia (blood cancer) ; he'd known it since last summer.

The moment he told me, the blood drained from my face and a sheaf of dizzying images fluttered through my mind. It was as though in that brief moment, time has suddenly stopped and i understood everything that had happened between us. I understood why he'd wanted me to dance with me. I understood why he looked so tired all the time. Everything becomes absolutely clear.

What he wanted Christmas at the orphanage to be so special. . .
 
Why he didn't think he'd go to college. . .

It all made perfect sense, and at the same time, nothing seemed to make any sense at all.

Park jimin had leukemia. . .
Jimin, sweet jimin, was dying. . .

My jimin. . .
"No, no," i whispered to him, 'there has to be some mistake. . . ."

But there wasn't, when he told me again, my world went blank. My head started to spin, i clung to him tightly to keep from losing my balance.
On the street i saw a man and a woman walking towards us heads bent and their hands on their hats to keep them from blowing away. A neighbour across the way standing on the step ladders, taking down his Christmas lights. Normal scenes from everyday life, things i would have never noticed before, suddenly making me feel angry. I closed my eyes wanting the whole thing to go away.

"I'm sorry, Taehyung ah," he kept saying over and over. It was i who should have been saying it, however i know that now, but my confusion kept me from saying anything.
Deep down, I knew it wouldn't go away. I held him again, not knowing what else to do, years filling my eyes, trying and failing to be the rock i think he needed.

We cried together on the street for a long time, just a little way down the road from his home. We cried some more when Mr park opened the door and saw our faces, knowing immediately that their secret was out. We cried when we told my mother later that afternoon andy mother held us both to her bosom and sobbed so loudly that both the maid and the cook wanted to call the doctor because they thought something had happened to my father.

We sat the day he told me, jimin patiently answered my question. He didn't know how long he had left, he told me . No, there wasn't anything the doctors could do. It was rare form of the disease, they'd , one  that didn't respond to available treatment. Yes when the school year has started, he'd felt fine. It wasn't until the last few weeks that he'd started to feel it's effects.
"That's how it progresses," he said. "You feel fine and then, when your body can't keep fighting, you don't."

Stifling my tears, i couldn't help but think about the performance.
" But all those rehearsal. . . those long days. . . Maybe you shouldn't have "
"Maybe," he said, reaching for my hand and cutting me off. "Doing the performance was the thing that kept me healthy for so long."

Later, he told me that seven months had passed since he's been diagnosed. The doctor had given him a year, maybe less.
These day it might have been different. These day they could have treated him. These day jimin would probably live. But this was happening forty years ago, and I knew what that means.
Only a miracle could save him.

"Why didn't you tell me?"
This was the one question i hadn't asked him,the one that I'd been thinking about. I hadn't slept that night, and my eyes were still swollen. I'd gone from shock to denial to sadness to anger and back again, all night long, wishing it weren't so and praying that the whole thing had been some terrible nightmare.

We were in his living room jimin didn't look as depressed as i thought he would but then again, he's been living with this for seven months already. He and his father had been the only one to know, and neither of them  had trusted even me. I was hurt by that and frightened at the same time.

"I'd made a decision," he explained toe, "that it would be better if i told no one, I asked my father to do the same. If you had only a few months left to live, is that what you would want?"

I knew he was right, but it didn't make it any easier. I was , for the first time in my life , completely and utterly at a loss.

I'd never had anyone close to me die before, at least not anyone i could remember. My grandmother had died when I was three, and i don't remember a single thing about her or the services that had followed or even the next few years after her passing. I'd heard stories, of course, from both my father and grandfather. My father would bring me with him when he put flowers on her grave, I never had any feelings Associated with her. I felt only for the person she'd left behind.

No one in my family or my circle of friends had ever had to confront something like this. Jimin was seventeen, a child on the verge of manhood, dying and still very much alive at the same time. I was afraid, more afraid than I'd ever been, not only for him, but for me as well. I lived in fear of doing something wrong, of doing something that would offend him. Was it okay to ever get angry in his presence? Was it ok to talk about the future anymore? My fear made talking to him difficult, though he was patient with me.

My fear, however, made me realize something else, something that made it all worse. I realized I'd never even known him when he'd been healthy. I had started to spend time with him only few months earlier, I'd been in love with him for only eighteen days. Those eighteen days seemed like my entire life, but now , when I looked at him, all I could do was wondering how many more days there would be.

On Monday he didn't show up for school, and i somehow knew that he's never walk the hallways again. I'd never see his honey brown hair moving through the crowd as he made his way to his next class. He was finished with school forever; he would never receive his diploma.

I couldn't concentrate on anything while I sat in class that first day back. I left school early and went to jimin's blowing off my classes after lunch. When I knocked at the door, jimin answered it the way he always did, cheerfully and without, it seemed, a care in the world.

"Hello, Taehyung," he said, "this is surprise."
When he leaned in to kiss me, i kissed him back, though the whole thing madee cry.

"My father isn't home right now, but if you'd like to sit, we can."
"How can you do this?" I asked suddenly. "How can you pretend that nothing is wrong?"
" I'm not pretending that nothing is wrong, Taehyung. Let me get my coat and we'll take a walk outside and talk, okay?"

He smiled at me, waiting for an answer, and i finally nodded, my lips pressed together. He reached out and patted my arm

" I'll be right back," he said.
I walked outside, jimin emerging a moment later. He wore heavy coat, gloves, and a hat to keep him warm. The nor'easter had passed and the day wasn't nearly as cold as it had been over the weekend. Still, though, it was too much for him.

"You weren't in school today," I said.
He looked down and nodded. "I know"
"Are you ever going to comeback?" Even though i already knew the answer, I needed to hear it from him.

"No," he said softly, "I'm not."
"Why? are you that sick already?" I started to tear up, and he reached out took my hand.
"No today I feel pretty good, actually. It's just that I want to be home inthe morning, before my father has to go to the office. I want to spend as much time with him as i can."

Before i die, he meant to say but didn't. I felt nauseated and couldn't respond.
"When the doctors first told us," he went on, "they say that I should try to lead as normal a life as possible for as long as i could. They said it would help me keep my strength up."

"There's nothing normal about this," I said bitterly.
" I know."
" Aren't you frightened?"

Somehow i expected him to say no, to say something wise like a grown up would, or to explain to me that we can't presume to understand the lord's plan.

He looked away.  " Yes," he finally said, I'm frightened all the time."

"Then why don't you act like it?"

"I do. I just do it in private."

"Because you don't trust me?"

" No," he said, " because I know you're frightened too."