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Jin had diabetes. It was just like that. The diagnosis came early, early enough that he didn’t know life "before." He lived with it like a shadow — present but unobtrusive. He could count carbohydrates faster than teachers counted attendance, knew the smell of his sweat when his blood sugar dropped, and had learned to recognize the subtle trembling of his fingers, signaling disaster. He had discipline in him, not born out of reason but necessity. He lived to the rhythm of insulin units, emergency snacks, and midnight awakenings in a panic when sleep became too deep. He didn’t rebel. This was simply his world.
And then he met Akin.
Akin, who smelled like a candy shop. Akin, could show up at a meeting with a chocolate muffin in hand and inadvertently leave a cocoa smear on his cheek. Kin, who had a sweet laugh, soft eyes, and lips that... Jin discovered by accident, too quickly, and then couldn’t stop thinking about them. Akin was the type of person whose presence stuck to your soul like caramel — sticky, golden, warm, and... impossible to peel off.
The first kiss was like a sin.
Not the dramatic, reprehensible kind of sin from ethics textbooks, but the kind... whispered to the ear by your conscience. Jin knew Akin ate chocolate. He could smell it before their lips even met. Milk chocolate, with a hint of salt. The sweetness stuck to his tongue instantly and melted in his mouth. Jin wanted to say something sensible — that he’d just had a mint, that he had insulin in his bag, that maybe they shouldn’t do this now — but Akin was too close, and his fingers were too warm along the line of his neck. So he just kissed him.
It was an explosion. A real, internal detonation, where Jin lost all data — he no longer knew how much he had eaten, what his blood glucose was, what his body felt, and what his heart felt. He only felt the sweetness. Powerful, audacious, frighteningly good. Like Akin was made of chocolate. He held the secret to happiness in his mouth and teasingly gave Jin only a brief taste, leaving him craving more.
Afterward, Jin sat, holding his forehead, with breath too quick and a heart too wild. Akin looked at him, worried as if he’d done something wrong, but Jin just laughed — that soft chuckle that always meant "I’m lost, but happy."
Akin didn’t yet know that from that moment, Jin measured him in units of sweetness. He tried to avoid him when his glucose was too high. That once, just from thinking about him, he had to eat an entire bag of almonds to balance his body. Kin’s kisses had something of the world’s most delicious desserts — and at the same time, they were a deadly threat.
Sometimes, Jin lay in bed next to Kin, with his face pressed against his neck, and he could taste the sweetness of his skin. It was real. Sugary. Akin breathed calmly, and his arms smelled like warm chocolate. Jin would always smile to himself then. He felt something in his body rebelling — a small warning signal, an alarm in the background. His blood sugar might be too high again. But Jin didn’t move. He didn’t reach for his glucose meter. He breathed. He inhaled Kin’s scent and thought only one thing: if he were to die... this is how he’d want it. This way. With his nose in the arm of the guy who was like a chocolate apocalypse.
One day, he told him out loud. That maybe Akin would kill him. That maybe one day their kissing would end in hyperglycemia, and he wouldn’t be able to react in time with insulin. Akin blinked, confused, and then pulled him closer, kissing him on the forehead and whispering softly, “That would be the stupidest, most romantic suicide in the world.”
Jin then thought that maybe this is what love tastes like. Like sugar. Like risk. Like death that doesn’t scare you because it comes in the form of sweetness.
Hyperglycemia had never been his goal. But if it was the result of being with Akin — the guy who always brought chocolate in his pocket and kissed like a dream — then so be it.
Every second was worth it.