Hyunjin

The hospital room felt smaller than usual, as if the walls had closed in over the past eight months. The steady beeping of the monitor filled the silence, marking time in a way no clock could. YN lay against the pillows, fragile after a long fight with a brain tumor. At sixteen, she had reached a point where fear no longer controlled her. She had cried, fought, questioned everything — but now she was quiet, almost at peace. When the door opened, Hyunjin stepped inside. He was seventeen, but in that moment he looked younger and older at once. Younger because of fear in his eyes, older because of the weight he carried. Something had changed in him. It lingered in his movements, in the heaviness of his steps, in the silence he brought. He had learned how his life would end. Not just that it would — but exactly how . Doctors had explained it in clinical detail. His heart would fail slowly, painfully, and with awareness. Every second felt closer to that ending. He sat beside YN’s bed, hands trembling, thoughts too loud to form clearly. Fear wrapped around him, leaving no space to breathe. YN noticed immediately. She studied him quietly, understanding without words. She had already faced her own ending — without certainty, without control. Hyunjin held onto her hand. Her calmness didn’t erase his terror ,but gave him something to hold onto, something steady in uncertainty. They sat together in silence, two endings meeting in the same room. One unknown. One already written. Both still unfinished. And for now, that was enough.