"It's just a flesh wound."
Black and purple, bruised but it will heal and that's all that matter. V doesn't know when he started using that phrase with such frequency, but he knows that it becomes more common half way through Rika's treatment. He starts leaning more towards wearing long-sleeved shirts and cardigans, things that hide the bruising so that Jumin doesn't ask anymore questions and with time he starts avoiding his childhood friend. Because Rika doesn't mean it, and even if she does it just proof of her love. Dark like her modes, but it can heal, it can be hidden and nurtured just like everything else under the sun. Black and blue ribbons declaring their love on his skin, and he is all right with that.
"Mr. Kim, if you don't get this surgery your sight will be gone within 2 years," is what the doctors tell him. Jumin pushes in his own way for him to get the surgery, that he doesn't even have to worry about the cost.
It's not just the flesh of his body, but the nerve ends and all the various other things that make his eyes function. It is losing his livelihood as a photographer and no longer seeing the sun that he loves so much, it is no longer seeing the words his beloved mother had written with such care. However, Rika is his personal sun, the one that he loves so much, the one that has shown him the beauty of the world in both real life and his work. If it was Rika and her love, then he doesn't mind losing everything else.
"Blood loss..immediate..." he drifts in and out of consciousness after being attacked. He doesn't remember much, but there is a recollection of the sun hurting so much that it burned. Hot and cold overtaking his body, screaming and rushing with complete blurriness though a voice frantically keeps telling him to stay alive.
"You can make it, V. Please," is the last thing he hears before being sedated. If he had been awake, he would have laughed it off and calmly told her that he was going to be all right. This is just his life on the line, it is never seeing her and not being able to make sure that she had made it out alive, safe and sound. For that reason alone, he has to keep struggling to stay alive, to make sure she is okay and Rika hasn't gotten to her.
But, wasn't Rika once the sun? He isn't sure what happened along the way, but for the stars -to see another night sky and so many other things with her- he is willing to fight and struggle, to stay alive and make his own selfish choices.
It might not be a flesh wound, but he isn't willing to succumb to Rika's pain anymore.