Seong Gihwan thought quietly for a moment, then his face soon turned red.
“......What could someone like me possibly do?”
“Well, then there’s nothing we can do.”
Taeho nodded and began eating his jjamppong again.
But even by the time Taeho finished his jjamppong, Gihwan had not managed to lift a single bite of his jjajangmyeon. He seemed nothing like the man who, until that very morning, had been mad for jjajangmyeon and singing its praises.
After finishing the entire bowl of jjamppong, Taeho pulled out a tissue and wiped his mouth.
Gihwan, who had been glaring at the now swollen, soggy jjajangmyeon until then, spoke.
“Um...... What should I do? What can I do for that child?”
Unlike the anxious-looking Gihwan, Taeho was relaxed.
“That depends on how far you want to go for him, Mr. Gihwan. We’d need to get an exact diagnosis, but from what I can see, Hayul seems to be showing mild symptoms of autism spectrum disorder. Considering the flashes of genius he’s showing, it could also be savant syndrome.”
“It might not be.”
Gihwan spoke urgently, then soon lowered his voice.
“When I was young, I was similar to him. I preferred playing alone with things like stones rather than dealing with people. Seeing Hayul reminded me of my childhood. But back then, I had my parents. Though both of them have passed away now......”
“Then that’s even better. You could set aside a certain amount of time every day to try teaching Hayul. Right now, it seems very important for him to have someone guide his social skills and language development.”
Gihwan nodded in agreement.
What the child seemed to desperately need right now was warm attention, and an adult who would meet his eyes and talk with him. If this time was missed, he might remain in that state forever.
Taeho continued.
“Going further, you could become Hayul’s foster parent, Mr. Gihwan.”
“Me? How could I......”
Gihwan was so startled he seemed about to leap out of his seat.
“Even if you’re not married, I believe it’s possible as long as you can prove you have stable housing and sufficient income.”
“But......”
The light that had briefly sparkled in Gihwan’s eyes abruptly went out.
“I don’t even have a job, let alone a home.”
“Then if you had a job, would you be willing to try?”
“Would there be any work I could do?”
“How about Geumsan Clinic? For now, it won’t even be a quarter of what you were paid at the Hexagen lab, but I can pay you enough to settle down here. Of course, depending on what you do going forward, we can renegotiate your annual salary.”
“Really? You can really do that for me?”
The light that had faded from Gihwan’s eyes came alive again.
Taeho smiled and nodded.
“If you don’t have a place to live right away, I’ll give you a room. You can’t live in the clinic forever, can you?”
“I don’t know if it’s right for me to impose on you even more......”
Gihwan felt ashamed. The young doctor before him was the benefactor who had saved his life, treated him all this time, and even bought him jjajangmyeon every day.
Was this man an angel descended from heaven?
“Mr. Gihwan, once a week, I make free house calls to elderly people in the mountain villages. I go directly to those who can’t come to the clinic themselves, take their blood pressure, and prescribe medicine. The reason I found you back then was because I was on my way to make a house call.”
“Ah, that’s incredible!”
Free house calls for elderly people in mountain villages!
So people like this really did exist. There were people like this in the world, and yet he had merely been exploited a little at work and ostracized a little, then whined alone in the mountains.
Along with a piercing sense of remorse, Gihwan felt grateful that he had been able to meet such a saint.
With damp eyes, Gihwan asked.
“Then what should I do?”
“First, when I go on house calls, please assist me at my side. Nurse Park used to do it, but something came up at home, so it’s become difficult for her now. And normally, you can help with work at the clinic. Going forward, I’m planning to start a project suited to your abilities, Mr. Gihwan.”
Gihwan thought it over carefully.
From what he had observed so far, Director Kang Taeho’s medical skills were outstanding enough that rich people came carrying bundles of money and begging for treatment. Yet despite that, he insisted on running a clinic in a rural place like this.
Moreover, as he had just seen, how much did the villagers respect and love him?
This angel in human form might look similar in age to him, but he had a character worth trusting and following for a lifetime, as well as unwavering convictions.
Seong Gihwan nodded with a solemn expression.
“If you give me that opportunity, I’ll do my very best. I’ll do anything you ask me to, Director.”
“Good. Let’s do our best together from now on.”
Taeho smiled brightly.
Only then did Gihwan seem to regain his appetite, picking up his chopsticks and trying to mix the jjajangmyeon. But the jjajangmyeon had hardened like a rice cake.
“I’ll order you a new one.”
“No, sir. No. This is delicious too.”
Gihwan stabbed his chopsticks into the lump of jjajangmyeon, lifted it whole, and bit into it, eating it with great relish.
Taeho’s heart pounded for the first time in a while.
Wasn’t this exactly like buying a growth stock about to surge, at the lowest price?
There were endless projects he could carry out with Seong Gihwan in the future.
-Coins have been charged by another 10%.
-Coin charge rate: 33%
***
On the way back to Geumsan Clinic after finishing the free house calls.
Dark clouds seemed to be rolling in, and then rain began streaking across the car window. Taeho increased the speed of the wipers.
Gihwan looked out the window at the rainy mountain road. Until not long ago, whenever it rained like this, he had taken shelter in a cave or under a large tree. Now all of that felt like a dream.
Gihwan murmured as if to himself.
“It’s raining quite a bit. The road must be slippery.”
“That’s why I’m watching even more carefully as I drive.”
Just then, he saw two elderly women crouched beneath a small tree beside the unpaved road, taking shelter from the rain.
Taeho immediately stopped the car and rolled down the window.
“Ma’am, how far are you going? I’ll give you a ride.”
The elderly women nodded.
“We’re going up there to Deunggol. Can you take us?”
“Yes. Please get in.”
“Oh my, thank you.”
When Taeho got out of the car, Gihwan quickly followed. The two of them each took one of the elderly women by the arm, helping them up when they even had difficulty rising from where they sat.
That was when Taeho noticed the dark brown spots spreading over one elderly woman’s arm.
Rema spoke.
-Pigmented lesion in skin tissue.
-Probability of heavy metal exposure: over 40%.
Taeho’s gaze turned serious.
For heavy metal poisoning to cause this kind of skin reaction, there was a high chance it was arsenic.
“Ma’am, when did these spots start appearing?”
“It’s been a few days. I haven’t been feelin’ too good lately.”
The elderly woman said, touching her arm.
After helping her into the back seat first, Taeho took her hand and examined it.
“Have your hands or feet felt numb or stiff recently?”
“A bit, I suppose. When you get old, that’s how it is for everyone.”
Fortunately, it had not yet reached the stage where keratosis was worsening.
The elderly woman Gihwan had helped also had similar symptoms, though milder.
After confirming that the elderly women had gotten into the car, Taeho sat in the driver’s seat and asked.
“Ma’am, do you go into the mountains often?”
“We live by pickin’ mushrooms and wild greens in the mountains.”
Taeho looked at the basket of mushrooms the elderly woman had set down beside her.
“Where did you pick these mushrooms?”
“Near that minin’ place over there. A lot of mushrooms grow there.”
At the mention of a mining site, Taeho’s expression hardened.
Gihwan, too, immediately grasped the seriousness of the situation. As soon as he climbed into the passenger seat, he spoke in a low voice.
“Director, this definitely seems like poisoning symptoms, doesn’t it?”
“Do you know what they’re building near the abandoned mine?”
“While wandering in the mountains, I did see a construction site from a distance, but there were a lot of people, so I didn’t go near it.”
“They call it an eco-friendly resource center, but in my opinion, it seems to have a lot of problems.”
Taeho spoke loudly enough for the elderly women in the back seat to hear.
“Ma’am. Let’s go to Geumsan Clinic for a simple examination. Those skin spots are worrying me a bit.”
“Is somethin’ very wrong?”
“We’ll have to run tests to know for sure.”
The elderly women were somewhat uneasy, but when Taeho calmly persuaded them, they eventually agreed to go to the clinic.
***
Only after examining the elderly women they had met in the mountains and driving them all the way home were Taeho and Gihwan able to return home.
A tiring day had come to an end.
After taking a shower, Taeho roughly shook out his wet hair, then handed a glass of gorosoe sap to Gihwan, who had washed up long ago and was sitting blankly on the sofa.
The gorosoe sap was something he had received as thanks while making free house calls that day.
“You worked hard on your first house calls today. Have a nice, cool drink.” “Thank you. Today really was exhausting.”
Gihwan smiled awkwardly. The work he had newly started was much easier than what he had done before, but because it had been so long since he had spent time in a state of tension, he became tired easily. He was gaining weight again, but it would take time for his stamina to return to what it had once been.
Gulp, gulp.
Taeho drank down the cool, sweet gorosoe sap in one go. It felt as though his fatigue were being washed away all at once.
On the other hand, Gihwan had been fiddling with his water cup for a while now, as if troubled by something.
“Director. About that Eco Resource Center. What exactly is it?”
“On the surface, they promote it as an eco-friendly resource recycling center. But the reality seems completely different.”
“How so?”
“I suspect they’re secretly burying industrial waste.”
Gihwan’s mouth fell open for a moment.
“Then shouldn’t you tell the villagers immediately?”
“It’s not that simple. The one who brought the Eco Resource Center into Geumsan-ri was the village chief. He said it would increase jobs and bring in more people.”
“Does that village chief know what kind of facility it really is?”
“Yes.”
Taeho nodded.
Gihwan frowned in disbelief.
“Then there must have been some kind of compensation.”
“In a rural village, the village chief’s influence is stronger than you might think. There’s even a saying that you need the village chief’s permission just to hang up a banner in the village. And it’s not only the Eco Resource Center. Originally, the city allocated a transportation budget so elderly people in remote areas could go to the hospital, but the village chief intercepted all of it in the middle. In the end, the elderly people here don’t receive the benefits they’re supposed to get.”
“He really is a terrible bastard.”
As if his chest felt stifled, Gihwan gulped down the gorosoe sap.
At first, he had fled into the mountains simply because he hated people and hated the world. But Seong Gihwan, who had spent his entire life in laboratories, knew nothing about the mountains.
The reason someone like him had been able to survive alone in the mountains for several months was not merely because he had been lucky.
There had been many times when villagers who encountered him in the mountains shared food with him. Even when he was so hungry that he approached houses deep in the mountain valleys, the elderly people living there gave him potatoes or corn. Sometimes they even cooked ramyeon for him. They had asked for nothing in return, simply sharing their food with him.
And there were bastards trying to harm people like that for their own profit!
As if in anguish, Gihwan covered his face with both hands.
“I don’t want to just sit by and watch the villagers suffer like this!”
As if he had been waiting for those very words, Taeho said,
“In that case, there’s something you can do, Mr. Gihwan.”
It’s about time to start moving.
Taeho thought to himself.