Before You Go • VHOPE [On Hold]

Chapter 1: Diagnosis

What an unpleasant surprise it was to know I was going to die.

If only life gave me a chance to live.

If only I could prevent my approaching death.

But I can't.

But since I can't,

If only I could shrug off this overwhelming fear of death.

And live for the rest of time I have.

───※ ·❆· ※───

Hoseok silently left his home that day to find solidarity at the beach shore. He couldn't sleep the night before. His reports had arrived the previous day.

The doctor who couldn't meet his father's eyes as he expressed his pityㅡ he said there wasn't anything that could be done to cure him. His illness was now in it's terminal stage.

Hoseok who was listening from behind the door had entered the room, his face as blank and pale as his sickness could make him look at that time. Denial tossing him harshly.

His father was crying. Mumbling how life is unfair for first taking his wife and now about to take his boy with the same disease, same pattern of detection. All too late. The doctor couldn't look at the young boy named Hoseok, who had nothing but a terrified look in his eyes.

"We can try to prolong lifespan with treatments like chemotherapy. Butㅡ it's inevitable. It will worsen with time."

He refused any treatment, horrified of the side effects. The blurry picture of his mother laying on the hospital bed smiling affectionately at him flashed before his mind. That was the last time he had seen her. He was very young.

Her cancer was detected in it's last stage, not terminal but at an advanced stage, she was in hospital the last two months of her life. Treatments worked, but slowly. So slowly that the life within her was decaying more faster than the malignant disease.

There wasn't a cure back then. And she died, eventually.

Now the same hereditary characterists followed him. If not anything, the cancer was the greatest resemblance he had with his mother. But he even surpassed her, because even treatments cannot save him.

He refused any treatment. Anything at this point would be an attempt to prolong his already finalising life and he decidedㅡ it isn't worth it.

To live another day, making his father spend his life's savings, trying to stay alive when he'd die soon, or earning pity from anyone ㅡ he deemed all of it to be worthless.

The saddest part of all wasㅡ no matter how much his father helplessly begged him to accept treatmentㅡ it's ultimately the patient's decision.

And Hoseok, trembling with agony in his heart, had already made that decision.

"How long do I have?"

"We can't be sure, but it can range from two months to half a year." 

───※ ·❆· ※───