KINGSTON, ONT.—Johanne Wagner describes her journey — from fearing her little girls would die to watching them grow healthy after successful liver transplants — as akin to travelling through hell and arriving in paradise.

But something was always missing. That something turned out to be Kris Chung.

Wagner, 46, beamed at the uniformed military cadet as he playfully wrestled with the twins at the family home on Thursday. Chung entered their lives a total stranger, donating his liver to little Binh Wagner last year, just months after Wagner’s husband, Michael, gave his to Binh’s twin, Phuoc.

And now Chung’s family.

“It’s been a blessing,” Johanne Wagner said.

She and Michael have nine children, four of whom were adopted from Vietnam. The youngest are twin girls, Binh and Phuoc (or Phu, as everyone calls her), who were adopted from a Ho Chi Minh City orphanage in 2012.

The girls, now 5, were born with Alagille syndrome, a rare genetic disorder that damaged their bile ducts and caused other health complications. Their doctors determined last year they needed liver transplants to stay alive. Michael, a veteran of three tours in Afghanistan, was a match — but he only had enough liver for one of them.

So while Michael gave his organ to Phu in February 2015, a decision they left to the doctors, Binh still needed a donor. The hunt was on for an anonymous benefactor, with Johanne leading the push for maximum media coverage that caused hundreds of people to apply to be Binh’s donor.

Enter Chung. Then 19 and majoring in English at Kingston’s Royal Military College, Chung saw their story and it pulled at his heart. The photos of Michael in uniform sealed it for him.

“Most people know what’s the right thing to do, deep down inside,” Chung said on Thursday, as the girl whose life he saved scrambled up his camouflage uniform and wrapped her arms around his neck. “It was something I had to do.”

The undergraduate student, who doesn’t touch coffee or booze, went through numerous tests in Toronto that were kept secret from his parents and professors, who grilled him for missing class. “I tried to be a silent professional about it,” he explained.

One night in April, he got a call from Dr. Gary Levy, the head of the liver transplant program at Toronto General Hospital. Chung understood he was second in line to donate to Binh, but the first choice had bailed out. Could he come to Toronto? The operation would take place in the morning.

The news was jarring, but he’s glad it happened that way. “The more time I had, the more time I had to second-guess myself,” he said. He booked a train to Toronto and went under the knife.

Chung said that after the surgery, he felt healthy in a matter of weeks, though he lost some weight and has a vertical scar on his abdomen that’s about the length of a pen.

In the meantime, the media’s appetite for Binh and Phu was insatiable. Their picture made the cover of a national magazine, while TV stations and newspapers carried the story all across the country.

Chung said he followed their progress and was heartened to know that Binh, especially, was doing well. He watched the Facebook page that Johanne keeps to give updates on the twins’ condition.

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A few weeks after Binh returned home, Johanne said she got an anonymous message. It said Binh’s donor was named Kris Chung.

At first Johanne was angry that someone would breach his anonymity, but curiosity got the better of her and she looked him up. She realized a Kris Chung was “liking” many of the posts about her girls. He even commented once, commending the family on its generosity and strength.

Eventually they started messaging, and both now say they suspected the other knew that Chung’s liver was filtering Binh’s blood. But it took them months to admit it. “It was like a well-choreographed dance,” Johanne said, “but always with the question: is he ever going to say who he is?”

Around Easter this year, he did — after Johanne texted him: “You know I know, right?” Soon Chung was sitting across from Johanne and Michael at a Starbucks near Queen’s University. The trio spoke for hours, a meeting that Johanne recalls as effortless and revelatory, “like we had known each other for years.”

It was only a week and a half until Chung met Binh. Chung showed up at the army base pool after Binh’s swimming lesson, feeling about as nervous as he did before surgery: “a little.”

A few months later, it’s not surprising to hear that Binh took to Chung. She and her twin sister seem to take to everybody.

When a reporter and a photographer walked through their front door Thursday, the girls raced up, hugged their legs, and playfully tugged at camera straps and a notepad, their boundless childhood energy so striking compared with their presurgery condition. Then, plastic gastric tubes poked through their bellies, and their jaundiced skin was peppered with small lumps of fat their livers couldn’t break down.

In the kitchen Thursday, Johanne fielded calls from the media. It’s part of the push, with Chung, to publicize the charity they have founded to honour Binh and Phu: Twins For Hope. Johanne explained the organization’s aim to raise $25,000 by December for impoverished children in Vietnam, where four of her kids were born. The whole clan — all 11 Wagners, plus Chung — plan to go there in December for charity work.

The big family, evidently, is now a little bit bigger.

“Michael shares a piece of him with Phu. Kris shares a piece of him with Binh,” Johanne said. “There was always something missing.”

But not anymore.