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And it actually did kill him. Death had come too easy.

But it didn't.

Wonwoo sat up in bed, caressing half of his numb face, with a terrible fever itching at his health, and breathed hard, as if he'd ran a 5k. Some of his crow black hair was sticking to his feverish forehead, due to the accumulation of sweat growing on the surfaces of his warm flesh, and now that he thought about it, he felt mildly sick. Sickly mild. One of those two.

"God," he managed to choke out, and moved some bangs out of his face. The dark of the night provided no support to moving hair out of his eyes.

"Wonwoo?" An all-too familiar voice asked from his right, startling him of his thoughts, which were all too cruelly still lingering on his nightmare. It was Byungi.

His hyperventilation was minimizing the more he focused on how his feet protruded from the thick blanket both he and Byungi shared.

Without even looking, he knew what she was doing, in her predictable kindness, she was already trying to calm him down using small exercises.

"Breathe, Wonwoo," that honey-like voice mimicked ribbons of the fresh spring showers he and her used to run through when they were pre-adolescents, running through his ears and intoxicating him. "Hold my hand, if you want."

Her lips were on his ears and Wonwoo pursed his own, gripping the bedsheets. He didn't want to continue to be in love with her. Can't she stop being beautiful?

But he held her hands, both in his wide, shaky ones. She laid her forehead on his shoulder, pecking his bicep, and ran her thumb across his knuckles.

"Why do you have nightmares so often?" The question that dropped from her mouth didn't really scare him, so much as startle him, but it did trigger a sea of thoughts he'd been trying to keep away for the past day and a half.

"I don't know," Wonwoo's answer came out too early for his liking yet he hoped for hers it did. "I'm alright, it was just a little dream. That's all."

Byungi continues pecking his arm with her wet lips and the gentleness of her fingers upon his begins to bring his heart back to regular beat.

"You do know that I want you to sleep well, right? I don't want you restless," her tiny voice is muffled by cloth covered flesh and she uncovers her mouth to adjust her words. "Wonwoo, I love you."

And those words had him reeling. His stomach was where his brain was supposed to be and vice versa. His heart thundered in his ears, after having just returned from an almost panic attack, which wasn't very fun. Almost painfully, the thin, beige monolids that protected his eyes clenched and folded into wrinkles. Force. Pressure. It was almost too much.

Surely, the laws of gravity were not on his side. He clenched his eyes shut. If they even were the laws of gravity.

He fell back onto the mattress and though it much rather hurt to lie yet not lie at the same time, Wonwoo managed a shaky smile upon his glistening face. Byungi continued to just gaze upon him with such adoration as the idea and feeling of love fictionally yet almost realistically oozed from every little characteristic she held.

"And I love you." His voice dispersed hoarsely across the soundwaves of the space they shared between the other. Byungi leaned down and placed a slow kiss on his cheek, something that showed more affection than that of the action upon his lips.

He loved her, with every fiber of his being. But what did the fact that he wanted to break up with her mean? Didn't he love her? Hadn't he rung up everyone in his family to say he was going to propose to Byungi? He'd already called her father and mother, formally asking for permission. They'd said yes.

"Hey, Wonwoo, I want you to be happy, you know that right?" Byungi mumbled after covering him up with a quilt and joining him underneath.

They both looked outside for a while, as she waited for his answer. Wonwoo didn't know what to say. He couldn't manage anything.

"How could I not know? Byungi. I'd...never forget." If it weren't for the way she had her arm around his, like the calm to a stormy sea, Wonwoo would've cried.

He didn't want to say goodbye, but at the same time, it was all he一No. It was all she needed.

Byungi smiled, succumbing to sleep, and he just rubbed her knuckle with his thumb, joining her in slumber. Goodbye, Byungi Li.