Rain drummed against the hospital windows with a melancholy that seemed to echo the weak beats of Baek Seok's heart. At fifteen years old, he lay in his hospital bed, eyes fixed on the white, dull ceiling that had become his only horizon for months. His parents stood near the door, speaking in hushed tones with the doctor, but their evasive glances and nervous gestures betrayed a truth he already knew.
"We've done everything we could," his mother murmured, tears in her eyes, but Baek Seok detected something different in her voice. It was no longer sadness, but resignation. Weariness.
His father nodded, carefully avoiding looking toward the bed. "The medical bills... we can no longer..."
Baek Seok closed his eyes. He knew this moment would come. His degenerative disease, incurable according to all the specialists, had gradually eaten away not only at his body, but also at his parents' love. At first, they had fought for him, consulted every possible doctor, sold their most precious belongings. But faced with the inevitable, their hope had turned into burden.
"Baek Seok..." His mother finally approached, placing a trembling hand on his forehead. "You... you understand, don't you? We have to think about your little brother too. He needs us."
The words pierced his heart like icy blades. Even in his weakness, he managed to nod. He understood. He had always been too mature for his age, forced to grow up quickly in the face of the disease that devoured his muscles and his hopes.
"We... we'll come back to see you," his father lied in a strangled voice, but his steps toward the exit were already too rushed.
Baek Seok watched them leave without a word. There was nothing to say. The door closed with a dull slam that resonated like the death knell of his last family.
The weeks that followed were a waking nightmare. Transferred to a long-term care facility with limited resources, Baek Seok found himself surrounded by a solitude that seemed to stretch infinitely. His former classmates, those who sometimes came to visit him at the beginning of his illness, had gradually stopped their visits. Who wanted to spend time with someone who reminded them of their own mortality?
"You scare people," Junho, his former best friend, had told him one day with brutal honesty. "You look like... you know... a ghost."
Those words had haunted him. Was that really what he had become? A specter of what he used to be?
Only Ah-ran continued to come. Every day after school, she walked through the facility's doors with a forced but sincere smile, carrying flowers she had picked from her grandmother's small garden or books she read aloud.
"You don't have to come," he often told her, his voice made hoarse by the disease that was now attacking his vocal cords.
"I know," she simply replied, arranging the flowers in the small vase near his bed. "But I want to."
There was something in her eyes, a tenderness he dared not name, for fear of seeing it disappear like everything else. Ah-ran was the only person in the world who still looked at him as a human being and not as a walking tragedy.
"Tell me about your day," he sometimes asked, just to hear her voice sing the small details of the outside world he would never see again.
She told him about classes, difficult teachers, fights between classmates, seasonal changes he could only observe through the small window of his room. Through her words, he lived vicariously a normal life he would never have.
One day, she placed her hand on his, frail and almost translucent now.
"You know you matter to me, don't you?" she whispered, her cheeks blushing slightly.
Baek Seok felt his heart tighten. He knew. He had always known, but he had never dared to really hope for it. How could one accept someone's love when all you had left to offer in return was an announced death?
"Ah-ran..." he began, but she shook her head.
"You don't need to say anything. I just wanted you to know."
That night, Baek Seok cried for the first time in months. Not from physical pain, but from the glaring injustice of it all. Why now? Why, when he had no time left?
Winter arrived with particular cruelty. Baek Seok's disease was progressing rapidly now, and even speaking became a titanic effort. Ah-ran continued her visits, but he could see she was fighting back her own tears.
"I'm sorry," he murmured when she thought he was sleeping. "I'm so sorry."
The doctors spoke in terms of weeks now, maybe days. Baek Seok had stopped counting. Time no longer mattered when each breath was a victory in itself.
One December morning, as snow fell gently outside, Ah-ran didn't come. Then not the next day either. Baek Seok learned from a nurse that she had fallen ill, a simple cold, but one that prevented her from risking contaminating him in his fragile state.
He smiled at this news. Even in her illness, she was thinking of protecting him.
It was that very night that his body decided it had fought enough.
Baek Seok closed his eyes, feeling a strange peace wash over him. His last thought was of Ah-ran, of her brave smile and gentle hands that had been his only consolation in this cruel world.
At least, he thought as darkness welcomed him, at least someone loved me.
The first sensation was warmth. An enveloping, comforting warmth, so different from the icy cold that had characterized his last months. Then came the sounds: voices, soft and melodious, speaking in a language he didn't recognize but mysteriously understood.
"He's so beautiful," said a female voice, filled with a tenderness that Baek Seok... no, that was no longer his name now... that he hadn't heard in a long time.
Hands lifted him delicately, and he realized with amazement that he had become a newborn again. His mind, intact and conscious, was trapped in a baby's body.
"Our little Kris," the voice murmured, and he understood that this was his new name. Kris Caldris.
A new life. A new chance.
As he opened his newborn eyes for the first time, meeting the loving gaze of his new mother, Kris couldn't help but think of Ah-ran, somewhere in his former world, probably mourning his death.
This time, he promised himself silently, this time, I won't be a burden to anyone.
For now, he was just a loved child, cradled by warm arms and promises of a future he didn't yet dare to imagine.
But deep in his heart, the memory of a girl with flowers and brave smiles would continue to accompany him, like a lighthouse in his new existence.