Oasis (A KaiSoo Fanfic)

Chapter 32 | The Odds

Once the tears started, they didn't (and couldn't) stop. I spent the rest of our session just crying, each sob getting harder than the last. 

I cried for so many reasons. I cried because I was angry at him, I cried because I was angry at myself. I cried because I missed him. Hell, I probably even cried because I had Cancer and because I didn't want to die. 

Kyungsoo was right about that. That "I hate everybody" front I put off for four years was simply to hide the fact that I was just as scared of dying as every other patient in that hospital. I liked living, though I realize I took it for granted many times. I liked being able to wake up in the morning and then spend hours painting. I was only 18 and there were so many things, so many adventures I wanted to experience before I left the physical world. I wanted to travel around the world and create a name for myself, leave a mark on the world before I died. I didn't want to have my life cut off before I even lived. I didn't want to end up like Kyungsoo with empty and unfinished dreams weighing down my soul. 

In the midst of all this digging up of my emotions, the surgery was still dangling above my head. There was a 50% chance it could spare my life from the wrath of Cancer and allow me to do all things I wanted to do, but there was another 50% chance that it wouldn't and be the thing that made me take my final breath. Somehow, as I tossed around those odds in my head, I felt like the better ones weren't in my favor. Of course, I could always push that thought aside and take the risk and if I did die, at least my chances of seeing Kyungsoo in the afterlife would be greater than the ones that killed me before I turned 40. 

My parents still wanted me to seriously consider getting it, but the idea honestly terrified me. Though they were completely different procedures with very different results, seeing what Kyungsoo's operation did to him internally and emotionally, it scared me because I might turn out like that: sadder and more depressed than before. Plus, there was the whole 50% chance of dying thing, too. 

I sat there in Ms. Choi's office with my parents at my sides, listening silently as they conversed about medical and other adult things. They had been doing that for quite a while and I kind of just slipped out of the conversation and managed to read more of the entries in Kyungsoo's journal. 

17/12/2011

Sometimes, I wonder what will happen to me when I die. I wonder where I'll go. Maybe I'll go to a nice place where I can just lounge around all day and eat strawberries as I watch over the people I love to make sure they stay safe and happy. I don't think I believe in Heaven and Hell, though. I prefer to think of the afterlife as a place where everyone, no matter what crimes and deeds they committed in their physical lives, is equal and no one gets punished for eternity. Yeah, I think I like that much better.

09/10/2011

Jongin called me hyung for the first time today. It took a bit of convincing and throwing pillows at him, but he did. I can't explain why, but it made me feel good, really good. I know he'll probably never like me in the way I think I like him, but it's nice to think about. Think about what we'd be like as a couple rather than two teenagers in a cancer hospital. Oh, and he's younger than me, I discovered that today, too. I still can't believe it. He's so tall for a 17-year-old. Or maybe I'm just too short for an 18-year-old. I don't know.

As I finished reading the last sentence, I chuckled to myself. "Silly hyung," I said quietly to myself, shaking my head as I spoke. 

"Jongin." Ms. Choi's voice snapped me out of my trance and I lifted my head to see her and my parents staring at me. "Are you here?" she asked, eyebrows raised as her eyes glanced down in the journal in my hands. 

"Yeah, I'm here," I said. "What's going on?"

She sighed a little in annoyance. "I was just explaining to your parents that the deadline to apply for the surgery is approaching," she said, clearly frustrated to have to be repeating herself.