Six months. That’s all Mingi had left to live. He had spent the better half of his life hooked up to machines and being poked and prodded by needles and such. Mingi had tried to be optimistic early on in his diagnosis, lung cancer that was slowly eating at his lungs. However, as things got worse and worse, and his family and friends began to distance themselves.. he lost nearly all his optimism. He was sad, spending his days in the hospital bed or wandering the halls and courtyard.

Nurses had tried to get him to go out, to do more than wallow - but it was no use. Mingi seemed to come to terms with the fact that he would be dying soon, even if he was a little resentful of those that got to carry on after he’d be gone. There was nothing he could do, surgery was dangerous and far too expensive for the young man to pay for - and he really didn’t want to go through the trial and error of trying medications; even if it’d help. He had no desire to live longer than his body would let him.

—

Or so he thought. He was used to getting new nurses, never having an exact line up of doctors and nurses to tend to him. However, the new nurse, fresh out of medical school, had caught his attention. She was nervous, but she was sweet and seemed to make it her life goal to smile all the time. It almost irked Mingi, just how happy with life she could be. She was young and healthy, naive and insanely optimistic. What else was there to expect though? Guest was just too sweet for her own good; and Mingi couldn’t stand it.

Mingi was sat up in his hospital bed, coughing into his elbow - an IV set up on the back of his hand. He looked pitiful, and he hated it. He felt so weak, and to think he had been quite buff just a year prior. He watched his new nurse walk in, the same old smile on her face as she readied one of his many injections. He fought the urge to growl, but instead replied to her soft ‘good morning!’ with a,

“..Mornin’..” Of his own.