Heaven Is An Arm Away - Kris/Suho
Heaven Is An Arm Away
Kris/Suho / PG / 3200 words
Joonmyun is losing his time, and suddenly heaven is too close to reach.
Kim Junmyeon is at his golden age, top position in the company he’s working for, when he finds out that he has lived with the cancer for most of his life. The doe-eyed young and brilliant doctor slash his best friend, Do Kyungsoo, has especially told him this in a private visit. Kyungsoo’s lips were trembling as the words stumbled out of his mouth, that Joonmyun wanted to protest that it should be him who trembles.
“I’m sorry, Joonmyun-ah.” Kyungsoo grips on his shoulder as a supporting gesture. At that very moment, they are best friends; not a doctor and a patient. Joonmyun is glad somehow, because sorry is a word he wouldn’t like to hear from people who put fake sympathies on him.
That Kim Joonmyun, he is the brightest person this company has over years, yet he carries such a burden on his back.
No one is ever perfect.
Will he be climbing down from his position soon?
How much is it left for him?
Joonmyun doesn’t think of how much his cancer would allow him to do activities before it eats him wholly. He tries not to even think about it. He smiles at his secretary each morning like he always has, and busies himself in meetings and papers. But the smiles are returned in a sympathetic way.
He wants to scream at them that he is okay, that he is not dying yet so they should treat him all the same. He is not the porcelain vase sitting by his office’s window. He is way stronger than that.
But nothing is proven once he loses consciousness after a meeting with a promising new client.
The first thing he asks Kyungsoo when his face is the first one that Joonmyun sees after regaining his consciousness is, how are my clients doing?
Kyungsoo lets out a relieved chuckle, and on the corner of his eye, Joonmyun can see a small pool of tears. Doctors aren’t allowed to have personal affair with patients, but Kyungsoo is rather persistent when it comes to his best friend. Especially when death is approaching slowly.
“You need to take more rests,” Kyungsoo states after checking on Joonmyun’s pulse and other medical shits Joonmyun doesn’t even want to care about.
“What about work?”
Kyungsoo looks up from his wooden clipboard. He appears to look thoughtful. “Assign more works for your employees. You can’t handle too much.”
“But I always handle that much,” Joonmyun protests.
Kyungsoo shakes his head, “Now is different, Joonmyun-ah. You can’t have too many.”
Different.
How is he different?
Joonmyun is still the same old Joonmyun, who drinks coffee in early morning and plays golf in his free time. He still watches the same comedy show and still listens to the same radio channel. How does a simple single word change the whole out of him?
Cancer used to be familiar as a zodiac sign to Joonmyun, until a distant relation of him died because of it. Ever since that, his mother taught him to go away from people with cancer, because boy, no one knows if you might catch it.
But Joonmyun learns that cancer is not only a zodiac but also a disease, and only few could survive from it. He also learns that even if he doesn’t have contact with people with cancers, he still has it. And that cancer will never leave him.
He also learns that, if there is one best friend who would accompany you for the rest of your life, it might be cancer.
Cancer doesn’t judge him, doesn’t question his choices of life. People still frown upon his decision for the company; Kyungsoo still dumps his stock of instant coffee when he thinks he is not looking.
Later he discovers that cancer is not as friendly.
His mother finds out that he is having the cancer after the second fall he experiences in the office. Everyone panics. He is quickly brought to the hospital and when he wakes up, instead of seeing Kyungsoo’s worried face, he sees the face of his mother full of tears.
“Why are you here?” Joonmyun asks her softly, and she breaks into sobs.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” She asks.
“Tell you what?”
“That you have it.”
Joonmyun smiles sadly at her, “It’s safe to say the word, you know. Cancer. It doesn’t make you gets it.”
His mother sobs even harder. Joonmyun pities her.
A nurse is called to carefully note down the record of his medical condition. A while later, Kyungsoo bursts into the room with his white coat seems to fall out of place that Joonmyun has to tease him about it.
“Yeah, just laugh about it,” Kyungsoo mutters under his breath as he takes the records and studies it thoroughly.
“Am I doing good, Doctor Do?”
Kyungsoo nods his head, despite the frown on his forehead. There he goes losing his professionalism again, Joonmyun notes. Joonmyun loves Kyungsoo, and he is really glad to have him as a best friend, but sometimes Joonmyun wishes Kyungsoo would treat him like he treats normal patients.
Because everything feels even heavier when the one who is supposed to know about your health shows unhappy face.
“How much possibility does Joonmyun have, Kyungsoo-ya?”
There is a heavy pause. Kyungsoo looks between Joonmyun and his mother, back and forth. This is an important piece of information he should know, Joonmyun realizes. But Kyungsoo has never told him anything.
“It’s a fifty-fifty, Mrs. Kim,” Kyungsoo finally says. “It’s not the first time our team handles a cancer patient.”
“How were the previous cases?”
Suddenly the ticking of the clock’s hand sounds even louder. Joonmyun counts each of them with closed eyes. It rhymes with his heartbeat.
“There is still chance of survival.”
“Oh, thank God.” His mother’s grip on his arm tightens briefly, as if she’s saying that everything is okay, and he doesn’t have to worry.
But Kim Joonmyun doesn’t worry even the slightest.
The next week Joonmyun finds himself living a different cycle of life. His mother has found her way into his apartment somehow, and that means no more coffee intakes as breakfast. She cooks him healthy and delicious food, and Joonmyun would be a fool to deny them.
He just sometimes misses his coffee.
He still goes to the office and does the papers piling up on his desk. Meetings have been taken over by his younger brother who is not as bright as him, but bright enough to take over the company. Jongin is a good boy, and Joonmyun trusts him.
If people would talk back of his brother, Joonmyun would be more than happy to send them cold glares. Jongin may have his own way in ruling over the company, but Joonmyun knows that the younger man would at least not take stupid decisions.
Small notes as reminders for his session with an assigned psychiatrist find themselves in his journal book. Kyungsoo has recommended the psychiatrist himself, and Joonmyun is extremely grateful for the favor.
The psychiatrist’s office is nothing scary for him. It’s a small room with the colors of black, white, and lavender on a side of the wall. Lavender is said to have calming effect, and Joonmyun likes lavender. The room smells like the aromatherapy candle the psychiatrist has lighten up in the room. It makes the room so the psychiatrist, Joonmyun thinks.
The psychiatrist’s name, Joonmyun learns later, is Byun Baekhyun. He looks young, perhaps his age, but he is known for handling cancer patients well. He smiles brightly at Joonmyun at their first meeting and it leaves a deep impression in him.
Baekhyun doesn’t ask him weird things. He only asks about Joonmyun’s day, and if there are things that catches his eyes today. Joonmyun thinks of is mother’s polkadot umbrella that stands against the wall in his apartment’s hallway, and tells Baekhyun about it. The psychiatrist looks amused more than surprised.
“How are you feeling about your cancer?” Baekhyun asks carefully, like it’s a taboo word and Joonmyun would explode upon hearing the word.
“I don’t know. How am I supposed to feel?” Joonmyun says truthfully, because in his 25 years of life, he doesn’t know how to feel life properly.
Baekhyun doesn’t laugh, he simply smiles instead, “People usually feel fear, stress, disappointment, sadness; they vary.”
“If you were me, what would you be afraid of? What would you be sad over?”
The question seems to surprise Baekhyun, because he doesn’t expect it. Maybe Joonmyun is the first one to be not afraid, to be not sad.
“That I would have to part with my loved ones,” Baekhyun answers finally. “You?”
Joonmyun closes his eyes. The thoughts of his mother, Kyungsoo, and even Jongin spiraling down his mind. When he opens his eyes, he smiles. “Me too.”
Time goes really fast for Kim Joonmyun. He is only 25 but he is resigning from the company he is working for already. Session with Baekhyun becomes more frequent as the said stress is starting to consume his mind. He becomes sensitive when his mother says the cancer word. He doesn’t need to be constantly reminded that he has it, he doesn’t need to be reminded that he is dying soon.
There is one day where he catches his mother with a cancer-supporting badge. Joonmyun feels a pang at his heart. Everytime he sees his mother has the badge proudly stands out on her clothes; Joonmyun is reminded that his mother now has a son with cancer.
And that son is he.
Not anyone else.
He lashes out at her once, when it becomes too much for him to have subtle reminders that he is now not normal. It results in his mother crying on her knees and Joonmyun pulling on his own hair in frustration, tears madly rolling down his cheeks, too.
“She treats me like I am going to die anytime soon,” Joonmyun says with upward lips in his recent session with Baekhyun.
Baekhyun smiles at him, as usual, and puts aside his clipboard. “I know it’s hard, but it’s the reality, Joonmyun.”
“I thought you are supposed to be the one who makes me calm.”
“I am supposed to make you comfortable with the reality, no matter how much bitter it is.”
“Sometimes I wish I’m not dying.” Joonmyun sighs. His hair is now a mess, but he doesn’t care. It’s only a few weeks until Kyungsoo assigns him to chemotherapy, and that would have his hair shaved down.
“But everyone is dying. You would eventually too, even if you doesn’t have it now.”
“I know, I just wish it wouldn’t be this soon.”
“Chill, you still have time.”
“It’s worsening.” Kyungsoo looks deeply sorry at their next meeting. “I’m sorry, Joonmyun-ah, but you have to start the chemotherapy tomorrow.”
“Oh,” Joonmyun says, because he doesn’t really know how to react. “How much time would I have until I-you know?”
Kyungsoo nods, “If everything goes right, we will have the operation to be done in three months.”
Three months.
Three fucking months are enough to send Kim Joonmyun, at his golden age and the former head of one of the brightest company in South Korea to go crazy over the disease he has.
Three months to go to find out that he is dying or simply having a lot of luck on his side.
On the first month, he loses himself in Baekhyun’s office, throwing things around and messing up the neat arrangement the psychiatrist has designed for his space. Joonmyun has never cried before, never that hard. And the shoulder Baekhyun is leaning for him is suddenly a taste of heaven.
If he ever goes to heaven, that is.
Baekhyun has been kinder, more understanding since the incident. He appears to be even more cheery in their sessions, like he wants to keep Joonmyun’s mood up in the air even thought that would be like drilling through a wall with a needle.
Joonmyun, on the other hand, becomes quieter. The coldness of Baekhyun’s office against his bare head even worsen his mood in sessions. His mother has been thoughtful and buys him a variety of caps and beanies, but it hurts Joonmyun more. He wishes his mother wouldn’t do such thing, because he doesn’t know where would the hats go once he is not there to wear them again.
On the second month, he refuses to go to the scheduled chemotherapy because he knows that he is not making any slightest progress even though Kyungsoo and his mother try hard to keep it from him.
As he strolls down the busy street of the heart of Seoul, Joonmyun rethinks of his life choices.
What has he done to anger God and deserve the cancer?
He owns nothing now. One by one the people around him starts to leave; the ones who stay are only his mother, Kyungsoo, and Baekhyun. Two of them are staying purely because of professionalism, one because it would be weird if she doesn’t.
Cancer is no longer a friend.
Joonmyun no longer has friends.
Joonmyun discovers time in a small shop he finds two weeks into the third month.
It is an antique shop with dusts collecting on each collection. He doesn’t even remember how he finds the shop, he just makes a turn and there he is now. Behind the cashier machine, a man not much older than him is leaning against the table. His hair is striking blond, a sign of rebel of that era.
“How may I help you?” The man asks. His voice is low and sends shivers to Joonmyun’s skin.
“I am just looking around,” Joonmyun says simply, because now he is not carrying cash and it would be difficult for him to even purchase a useless, rusty silver badge that’s displayed.
The man hums in response. He walks around the cashier to stand in front of Joonmyun and study him from head to toe. The height difference is striking, Joonmyun notes.
“I know what you need.” The man’s smile unnerves Joonmyun. He wants to protest, but then the man already disappears to the back of the shop. Joonmyun shifts on his feet, thinking of polite ways to refuse the purchase of whatever that is the man will bring him. He knows it, he shouldn’t have wandered around without assistance of his mother.
But there’s only two weeks until the judgement day. Or that’s how he has been dubbing it.
He has lost a lot of weight during chemotherapy. His face looks a lot thinner now, but that’s because the cancer has been consuming himself. The laughs and smiles he makes now is not entirely sincere, even the ones for his mother or Baekhyun. Kyungsoo has warned him not to waste his energy, but Kim Joonmyun doesn’t want his last days of living go wasted.
He could go for a vacation in Jeju Island if he could, but the medical records sitting on Kyungsoo’s clipboard has the doctor frowned and shaking his head at the earnest question.
“Here you go,” the man comes with a gold thing in his hand. Joonmyun has to squint to finally know that it’s a watch. The man helps putting the watch around Joonmyun’s wrist, and he is surprised on how the wrist fits his wrist perfectly. He eyes the watch carefully, from its exquisite design to the weirdly printed numbers on it.
It looks pretty, something that old Joonmyun would buy right away and have his clients drooling away at it.
But Joonmyun now and Joonmyun then is not the same, never be the same. So he reaches up to take off the watch from his wrist with an apologetic smile, “I’m sorry but I’m not looking for a new watch-“
“You don’t understand,” the man says as he fixes back the watch. “What you seek is not the watch, but the time.”
The statement takes Joonmyun aback. “I-“
“One rule is that you can not cheat death, but if time is your wish, I can lend you some of mine,” the man continues. “When the time comes, you will know when to return them to me. I will always be watching my time.”
“I’m sorry but I’m not bringing any cash with me-“
“Time is priceless, young man. You don’t buy it with money,” he smiles, the same cold and mysterious smile he sent Joonmyun earlier. “You exchange it with something more meaningful. Time is a friend, an eternal one.”
The man leans down to press a kiss on the knuckle of Joonmyun’s hand, an intimate gesture Joonmyun has never received in all his life. He wants to pull back his hand, but the grip around his wrist is too tight.
Soon his sight goes blurry, and his consciousness goes away.
If time is what Joonmyun seeks for, then a cure falls somewhere in between.
When he wakes up, it’s in a familiar yet feels so strange hospital room. An iv is inserted into his left hand, limiting his moves, and the rest of his body feels like it’s been hit by a ton of weight. Joonmyun has never felt so helpless in his life before.
“Joonmyun!” His mother comes bursting into the room with tears stains on her cheeks. He wonders when was the last time he has seen her cheeks without the stains. It looks like he has been a great burden for her. “I thought I would lose you,” she whispers as she strokes his hair in a comforting way.
Kyungsoo suddenly enters his frame of view. He looks tired. Joonmyun wants to laugh at his face, but he couldn’t. Some medical tools are monitoring even his breathing. And he has a feeling that if he laughs, his body would break into pieces.
“Congratulations, you are the new addition to the fifty percent of people who survives,” Kyungsoo smiles goofily. It’s a smile Joonmyun often sees on him at their younger days. He somehow feels relieved to see that smile back.
So he survives.
Congratulations, he mentally pats his own shoulder.
But he knows that this is not the end. He remembers what happened in the antique shop.
One could never cheat the death, but time is adjustable.
He is just being lent more time, not skipping the death. One day, his time will be taken away, but Joonmyun is sure that it wouldn’t be anytime soon. He at least should have time to feel relieved and live a new life as a new person.
His mother would support him, Kyungsoo would be happy to take care of him, and Baekhyun would be glad to hear more stories of his life.
“You might feel tired, and it’s okay. Just sleep as much as you want, you will return to your normal self in two or three days.”
It suddenly feels weird to hear people counting the time. Don’t they know that the time they have is limited? There is always a clock ticking in the back of everyone’s head, counting down their lifespan. And Joonmyun doesn’t want that, he doesn’t want to know how much of time he has lent to him.
It would be best to let the time flow freely.
.Joonmyun sighs, he suddenly feels too tired to have his eyes opened up.
In his dream, he sees blond hair and a ticking golden watch with crooked hands. A name resonates through his head: Kris.
“I will always be watching my time.”
--fin.
▶ next
a/n: pardon me as i wrote this in 4 hours i should've used for homeworks! this is not entirely krisho, but i've always pictured this as a krisho T_T should i write a sequel???
Kris/Suho / PG / 3200 words
Joonmyun is losing his time, and suddenly heaven is too close to reach.
Kim Junmyeon is at his golden age, top position in the company he’s working for, when he finds out that he has lived with the cancer for most of his life. The doe-eyed young and brilliant doctor slash his best friend, Do Kyungsoo, has especially told him this in a private visit. Kyungsoo’s lips were trembling as the words stumbled out of his mouth, that Joonmyun wanted to protest that it should be him who trembles.
“I’m sorry, Joonmyun-ah.” Kyungsoo grips on his shoulder as a supporting gesture. At that very moment, they are best friends; not a doctor and a patient. Joonmyun is glad somehow, because sorry is a word he wouldn’t like to hear from people who put fake sympathies on him.
That Kim Joonmyun, he is the brightest person this company has over years, yet he carries such a burden on his back.
No one is ever perfect.
Will he be climbing down from his position soon?
How much is it left for him?
Joonmyun doesn’t think of how much his cancer would allow him to do activities before it eats him wholly. He tries not to even think about it. He smiles at his secretary each morning like he always has, and busies himself in meetings and papers. But the smiles are returned in a sympathetic way.
He wants to scream at them that he is okay, that he is not dying yet so they should treat him all the same. He is not the porcelain vase sitting by his office’s window. He is way stronger than that.
But nothing is proven once he loses consciousness after a meeting with a promising new client.
The first thing he asks Kyungsoo when his face is the first one that Joonmyun sees after regaining his consciousness is, how are my clients doing?
Kyungsoo lets out a relieved chuckle, and on the corner of his eye, Joonmyun can see a small pool of tears. Doctors aren’t allowed to have personal affair with patients, but Kyungsoo is rather persistent when it comes to his best friend. Especially when death is approaching slowly.
“You need to take more rests,” Kyungsoo states after checking on Joonmyun’s pulse and other medical shits Joonmyun doesn’t even want to care about.
“What about work?”
Kyungsoo looks up from his wooden clipboard. He appears to look thoughtful. “Assign more works for your employees. You can’t handle too much.”
“But I always handle that much,” Joonmyun protests.
Kyungsoo shakes his head, “Now is different, Joonmyun-ah. You can’t have too many.”
Different.
How is he different?
Joonmyun is still the same old Joonmyun, who drinks coffee in early morning and plays golf in his free time. He still watches the same comedy show and still listens to the same radio channel. How does a simple single word change the whole out of him?
Cancer used to be familiar as a zodiac sign to Joonmyun, until a distant relation of him died because of it. Ever since that, his mother taught him to go away from people with cancer, because boy, no one knows if you might catch it.
But Joonmyun learns that cancer is not only a zodiac but also a disease, and only few could survive from it. He also learns that even if he doesn’t have contact with people with cancers, he still has it. And that cancer will never leave him.
He also learns that, if there is one best friend who would accompany you for the rest of your life, it might be cancer.
Cancer doesn’t judge him, doesn’t question his choices of life. People still frown upon his decision for the company; Kyungsoo still dumps his stock of instant coffee when he thinks he is not looking.
Later he discovers that cancer is not as friendly.
His mother finds out that he is having the cancer after the second fall he experiences in the office. Everyone panics. He is quickly brought to the hospital and when he wakes up, instead of seeing Kyungsoo’s worried face, he sees the face of his mother full of tears.
“Why are you here?” Joonmyun asks her softly, and she breaks into sobs.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” She asks.
“Tell you what?”
“That you have it.”
Joonmyun smiles sadly at her, “It’s safe to say the word, you know. Cancer. It doesn’t make you gets it.”
His mother sobs even harder. Joonmyun pities her.
A nurse is called to carefully note down the record of his medical condition. A while later, Kyungsoo bursts into the room with his white coat seems to fall out of place that Joonmyun has to tease him about it.
“Yeah, just laugh about it,” Kyungsoo mutters under his breath as he takes the records and studies it thoroughly.
“Am I doing good, Doctor Do?”
Kyungsoo nods his head, despite the frown on his forehead. There he goes losing his professionalism again, Joonmyun notes. Joonmyun loves Kyungsoo, and he is really glad to have him as a best friend, but sometimes Joonmyun wishes Kyungsoo would treat him like he treats normal patients.
Because everything feels even heavier when the one who is supposed to know about your health shows unhappy face.
“How much possibility does Joonmyun have, Kyungsoo-ya?”
There is a heavy pause. Kyungsoo looks between Joonmyun and his mother, back and forth. This is an important piece of information he should know, Joonmyun realizes. But Kyungsoo has never told him anything.
“It’s a fifty-fifty, Mrs. Kim,” Kyungsoo finally says. “It’s not the first time our team handles a cancer patient.”
“How were the previous cases?”
Suddenly the ticking of the clock’s hand sounds even louder. Joonmyun counts each of them with closed eyes. It rhymes with his heartbeat.
“There is still chance of survival.”
“Oh, thank God.” His mother’s grip on his arm tightens briefly, as if she’s saying that everything is okay, and he doesn’t have to worry.
But Kim Joonmyun doesn’t worry even the slightest.
The next week Joonmyun finds himself living a different cycle of life. His mother has found her way into his apartment somehow, and that means no more coffee intakes as breakfast. She cooks him healthy and delicious food, and Joonmyun would be a fool to deny them.
He just sometimes misses his coffee.
He still goes to the office and does the papers piling up on his desk. Meetings have been taken over by his younger brother who is not as bright as him, but bright enough to take over the company. Jongin is a good boy, and Joonmyun trusts him.
If people would talk back of his brother, Joonmyun would be more than happy to send them cold glares. Jongin may have his own way in ruling over the company, but Joonmyun knows that the younger man would at least not take stupid decisions.
Small notes as reminders for his session with an assigned psychiatrist find themselves in his journal book. Kyungsoo has recommended the psychiatrist himself, and Joonmyun is extremely grateful for the favor.
The psychiatrist’s office is nothing scary for him. It’s a small room with the colors of black, white, and lavender on a side of the wall. Lavender is said to have calming effect, and Joonmyun likes lavender. The room smells like the aromatherapy candle the psychiatrist has lighten up in the room. It makes the room so the psychiatrist, Joonmyun thinks.
The psychiatrist’s name, Joonmyun learns later, is Byun Baekhyun. He looks young, perhaps his age, but he is known for handling cancer patients well. He smiles brightly at Joonmyun at their first meeting and it leaves a deep impression in him.
Baekhyun doesn’t ask him weird things. He only asks about Joonmyun’s day, and if there are things that catches his eyes today. Joonmyun thinks of is mother’s polkadot umbrella that stands against the wall in his apartment’s hallway, and tells Baekhyun about it. The psychiatrist looks amused more than surprised.
“How are you feeling about your cancer?” Baekhyun asks carefully, like it’s a taboo word and Joonmyun would explode upon hearing the word.
“I don’t know. How am I supposed to feel?” Joonmyun says truthfully, because in his 25 years of life, he doesn’t know how to feel life properly.
Baekhyun doesn’t laugh, he simply smiles instead, “People usually feel fear, stress, disappointment, sadness; they vary.”
“If you were me, what would you be afraid of? What would you be sad over?”
The question seems to surprise Baekhyun, because he doesn’t expect it. Maybe Joonmyun is the first one to be not afraid, to be not sad.
“That I would have to part with my loved ones,” Baekhyun answers finally. “You?”
Joonmyun closes his eyes. The thoughts of his mother, Kyungsoo, and even Jongin spiraling down his mind. When he opens his eyes, he smiles. “Me too.”
Time goes really fast for Kim Joonmyun. He is only 25 but he is resigning from the company he is working for already. Session with Baekhyun becomes more frequent as the said stress is starting to consume his mind. He becomes sensitive when his mother says the cancer word. He doesn’t need to be constantly reminded that he has it, he doesn’t need to be reminded that he is dying soon.
There is one day where he catches his mother with a cancer-supporting badge. Joonmyun feels a pang at his heart. Everytime he sees his mother has the badge proudly stands out on her clothes; Joonmyun is reminded that his mother now has a son with cancer.
And that son is he.
Not anyone else.
He lashes out at her once, when it becomes too much for him to have subtle reminders that he is now not normal. It results in his mother crying on her knees and Joonmyun pulling on his own hair in frustration, tears madly rolling down his cheeks, too.
“She treats me like I am going to die anytime soon,” Joonmyun says with upward lips in his recent session with Baekhyun.
Baekhyun smiles at him, as usual, and puts aside his clipboard. “I know it’s hard, but it’s the reality, Joonmyun.”
“I thought you are supposed to be the one who makes me calm.”
“I am supposed to make you comfortable with the reality, no matter how much bitter it is.”
“Sometimes I wish I’m not dying.” Joonmyun sighs. His hair is now a mess, but he doesn’t care. It’s only a few weeks until Kyungsoo assigns him to chemotherapy, and that would have his hair shaved down.
“But everyone is dying. You would eventually too, even if you doesn’t have it now.”
“I know, I just wish it wouldn’t be this soon.”
“Chill, you still have time.”
“It’s worsening.” Kyungsoo looks deeply sorry at their next meeting. “I’m sorry, Joonmyun-ah, but you have to start the chemotherapy tomorrow.”
“Oh,” Joonmyun says, because he doesn’t really know how to react. “How much time would I have until I-you know?”
Kyungsoo nods, “If everything goes right, we will have the operation to be done in three months.”
Three months.
Three fucking months are enough to send Kim Joonmyun, at his golden age and the former head of one of the brightest company in South Korea to go crazy over the disease he has.
Three months to go to find out that he is dying or simply having a lot of luck on his side.
On the first month, he loses himself in Baekhyun’s office, throwing things around and messing up the neat arrangement the psychiatrist has designed for his space. Joonmyun has never cried before, never that hard. And the shoulder Baekhyun is leaning for him is suddenly a taste of heaven.
If he ever goes to heaven, that is.
Baekhyun has been kinder, more understanding since the incident. He appears to be even more cheery in their sessions, like he wants to keep Joonmyun’s mood up in the air even thought that would be like drilling through a wall with a needle.
Joonmyun, on the other hand, becomes quieter. The coldness of Baekhyun’s office against his bare head even worsen his mood in sessions. His mother has been thoughtful and buys him a variety of caps and beanies, but it hurts Joonmyun more. He wishes his mother wouldn’t do such thing, because he doesn’t know where would the hats go once he is not there to wear them again.
On the second month, he refuses to go to the scheduled chemotherapy because he knows that he is not making any slightest progress even though Kyungsoo and his mother try hard to keep it from him.
As he strolls down the busy street of the heart of Seoul, Joonmyun rethinks of his life choices.
What has he done to anger God and deserve the cancer?
He owns nothing now. One by one the people around him starts to leave; the ones who stay are only his mother, Kyungsoo, and Baekhyun. Two of them are staying purely because of professionalism, one because it would be weird if she doesn’t.
Cancer is no longer a friend.
Joonmyun no longer has friends.
Joonmyun discovers time in a small shop he finds two weeks into the third month.
It is an antique shop with dusts collecting on each collection. He doesn’t even remember how he finds the shop, he just makes a turn and there he is now. Behind the cashier machine, a man not much older than him is leaning against the table. His hair is striking blond, a sign of rebel of that era.
“How may I help you?” The man asks. His voice is low and sends shivers to Joonmyun’s skin.
“I am just looking around,” Joonmyun says simply, because now he is not carrying cash and it would be difficult for him to even purchase a useless, rusty silver badge that’s displayed.
The man hums in response. He walks around the cashier to stand in front of Joonmyun and study him from head to toe. The height difference is striking, Joonmyun notes.
“I know what you need.” The man’s smile unnerves Joonmyun. He wants to protest, but then the man already disappears to the back of the shop. Joonmyun shifts on his feet, thinking of polite ways to refuse the purchase of whatever that is the man will bring him. He knows it, he shouldn’t have wandered around without assistance of his mother.
But there’s only two weeks until the judgement day. Or that’s how he has been dubbing it.
He has lost a lot of weight during chemotherapy. His face looks a lot thinner now, but that’s because the cancer has been consuming himself. The laughs and smiles he makes now is not entirely sincere, even the ones for his mother or Baekhyun. Kyungsoo has warned him not to waste his energy, but Kim Joonmyun doesn’t want his last days of living go wasted.
He could go for a vacation in Jeju Island if he could, but the medical records sitting on Kyungsoo’s clipboard has the doctor frowned and shaking his head at the earnest question.
“Here you go,” the man comes with a gold thing in his hand. Joonmyun has to squint to finally know that it’s a watch. The man helps putting the watch around Joonmyun’s wrist, and he is surprised on how the wrist fits his wrist perfectly. He eyes the watch carefully, from its exquisite design to the weirdly printed numbers on it.
It looks pretty, something that old Joonmyun would buy right away and have his clients drooling away at it.
But Joonmyun now and Joonmyun then is not the same, never be the same. So he reaches up to take off the watch from his wrist with an apologetic smile, “I’m sorry but I’m not looking for a new watch-“
“You don’t understand,” the man says as he fixes back the watch. “What you seek is not the watch, but the time.”
The statement takes Joonmyun aback. “I-“
“One rule is that you can not cheat death, but if time is your wish, I can lend you some of mine,” the man continues. “When the time comes, you will know when to return them to me. I will always be watching my time.”
“I’m sorry but I’m not bringing any cash with me-“
“Time is priceless, young man. You don’t buy it with money,” he smiles, the same cold and mysterious smile he sent Joonmyun earlier. “You exchange it with something more meaningful. Time is a friend, an eternal one.”
The man leans down to press a kiss on the knuckle of Joonmyun’s hand, an intimate gesture Joonmyun has never received in all his life. He wants to pull back his hand, but the grip around his wrist is too tight.
Soon his sight goes blurry, and his consciousness goes away.
If time is what Joonmyun seeks for, then a cure falls somewhere in between.
When he wakes up, it’s in a familiar yet feels so strange hospital room. An iv is inserted into his left hand, limiting his moves, and the rest of his body feels like it’s been hit by a ton of weight. Joonmyun has never felt so helpless in his life before.
“Joonmyun!” His mother comes bursting into the room with tears stains on her cheeks. He wonders when was the last time he has seen her cheeks without the stains. It looks like he has been a great burden for her. “I thought I would lose you,” she whispers as she strokes his hair in a comforting way.
Kyungsoo suddenly enters his frame of view. He looks tired. Joonmyun wants to laugh at his face, but he couldn’t. Some medical tools are monitoring even his breathing. And he has a feeling that if he laughs, his body would break into pieces.
“Congratulations, you are the new addition to the fifty percent of people who survives,” Kyungsoo smiles goofily. It’s a smile Joonmyun often sees on him at their younger days. He somehow feels relieved to see that smile back.
So he survives.
Congratulations, he mentally pats his own shoulder.
But he knows that this is not the end. He remembers what happened in the antique shop.
One could never cheat the death, but time is adjustable.
He is just being lent more time, not skipping the death. One day, his time will be taken away, but Joonmyun is sure that it wouldn’t be anytime soon. He at least should have time to feel relieved and live a new life as a new person.
His mother would support him, Kyungsoo would be happy to take care of him, and Baekhyun would be glad to hear more stories of his life.
“You might feel tired, and it’s okay. Just sleep as much as you want, you will return to your normal self in two or three days.”
It suddenly feels weird to hear people counting the time. Don’t they know that the time they have is limited? There is always a clock ticking in the back of everyone’s head, counting down their lifespan. And Joonmyun doesn’t want that, he doesn’t want to know how much of time he has lent to him.
It would be best to let the time flow freely.
.Joonmyun sighs, he suddenly feels too tired to have his eyes opened up.
In his dream, he sees blond hair and a ticking golden watch with crooked hands. A name resonates through his head: Kris.
“I will always be watching my time.”
--fin.
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a/n: pardon me as i wrote this in 4 hours i should've used for homeworks! this is not entirely krisho, but i've always pictured this as a krisho T_T should i write a sequel???