Park Seong-u found it boring lying in his hospital room, so he dragged his IV stand along and limped out into the waiting room.
He saw Seong Gihwan sitting on the waiting-room sofa with a little girl.
“Hello, mister.”
“Dr. Seong, you’re out here. Is she your daughter?”
“Oh, no, she isn’t······”
Gihwan’s eyes softened as he stroked the girl’s hair. His gaze was filled with affection.
Park Seong-u sat down on the sofa and looked at the girl.
She looked about five or six years old. She was lying facedown on the waiting-room table, drawing with crayons.
There were none of the round suns, houses, rainbows, or stick figures that children her age usually drew. In the center of the drawing paper, hexagons and pentagons intertwined in a swirling pattern.
The girl kept her lips firmly pressed together as she drew lines, changing crayon colors one after another.
“Twooo, threeee, fooour, seeeven, eleveeeen······”
Each time a number came from the girl’s tiny mouth, the angle of the shape changed.
Park Seong-u stuck out his tongue in amazement and asked,
“It looks like some kind of city blueprint. What are you drawing?”
But the girl pretended not to hear him, concentrating only on her picture.
Park Seong-u tilted his head. He couldn’t find any pattern in it at all.
Gihwan smiled and said,
“She’s expanding a prime-number arrangement according to the golden angle. Hayul, the next one here is thirty-one in red, right?”
Without looking up, Hayul answered in a whisper.
“Yes. Thirty-one.”
“Hayul’s really good at this.”
Gihwan beamed with delight.
For a moment, a spark of happiness crossed Hayul’s otherwise expressionless face, then vanished. She began drawing the shapes again, changing the crayon colors as she went.
Gihwan spoke to Park Seong-u, who was only blinking his eyes.
“Hayul’s drawing represents a multiple-encryption rule. It’s a sequence expressed through numbers, colors, and angles.”
“Multiple encryp······ what? Huh, no matter how I look at it, I can’t tell what any of it means.”
Park Seong-u shrugged, looking astonished.
As if he intended to explain it more simply, Gihwan said,
“Well, it’s made by setting prime numbers as the endpoints. It’ll be easier to understand if you think of every point, angle, and color as a formula.”
The more Park Seong-u listened, the less he understood. Still, it had been a very long time since he had seen a child up close, and the girl’s actions were adorable, so he simply watched her.
Hayul, who had been drawing diligently, finally put down her crayons. Then she lifted the drawing paper high with both hands and showed it to Gihwan.
“You’re finished? Wow! You’re really good. Look at how precisely the angle turns at 135 degrees. Hayul’s the best!”
Park Seong-u was startled when Gihwan shouted with such exaggerated enthusiasm. It was completely different from the image of Dr. Seong that he had always known.
“Hee.”
Hayul’s eyes sparkled as she opened her mouth wide. Even without putting it into words, she was clearly delighted.
“Hayul did so well! Hayul, you try it too! Hayul, you did a really good job!”
At Gihwan’s repeated encouragement, the hesitant Hayul clapped her hands.
“Did good! Hayuri!”
“That’s right, our Hayul did so well!”
The child’s awkward expression had blossomed brightly like a flower before he knew it.
Park Seong-u looked at her face and found himself smiling along.
“I don’t know what it is, but all right. Good job! You did great!”
Park Seong-u smiled, showing his gums.
How long had it been since he had last smiled?
They said having a child gave you many reasons to smile······
Suddenly, he felt something slam down heavily inside his chest.
A past he had kept buried for a long time began to surface faintly. Hot emotions rose from deep within his heart.
He, too, had had a daughter like Hayul.
A very long time ago—so long ago that it was difficult to remember now.
He used to sit his young daughter on his lap and play with her while they built things out of blocks.
“Daddy!”
The sensation of his daughter, her hair braided into two pigtails, wrapping her short, chubby arms tightly around his neck came flooding back.
That was right. My daughter had been just about that age, too.
Back then, he had let those moments pass without realizing how precious they were.
He had allowed moments he would never feel again to drift away like a dream.
A heavy pain rose, pressing down on his chest.
Thick tears streamed down his cheeks.
“Haa······”
Gihwan looked at Park Seong-u in surprise.
“Mister······ Are you all right?”
“It just suddenly······ I thought of my daughter. Seeing that child reminded me of those days······”
Park Seong-u turned his face away and hurriedly wiped it with his sleeve.
Taeho had been standing in the corner, watching them from a little while ago. This was a good opportunity to use the information Rema had found.
Taeho walked over and gently placed a hand on Park Seong-u’s shoulder.
“Don’t you want to see your daughter?”
Park Seong-u was unable to speak for a moment, then finally forced out a hoarse voice.
“My daughter······ I don’t even know where she is now. I’ve ended up like this—what face could I possibly show her?”
Regret and longing were tangled together in his voice.
Taeho spoke calmly.
“I looked into it, and your daughter is living in Los Angeles, USA. It seems she got married last year and is expecting a child.”
“How do you know that, Director?”
“I have access to a very powerful search tool. Your daughter also used social media quite actively.”
At the words “search tool,” Rema vibrated indignantly, but Taeho ignored it and opened his phone. Then he showed Park Seong-u his daughter’s Byeolstagram account.
There was a photo of his daughter smiling brightly as she cradled her bulging belly with both hands. A white man who appeared to be her husband stood behind her.
“She was ten the last time I saw her, and she’s grown this much? Haa······ She looks like her mother, but I can see my mother’s face in her, too.”
Park Seong-u stroked the photograph of his daughter, his eyes brimming with tears.
“Your daughter must miss her father, too. What child wouldn’t miss their parents? Once she gives birth, she’ll miss you even more.”
“Uuugh······”
Park Seong-u shed tears as he swiped through several more photographs. He found his wife, who had aged as much as the years that had passed, and his son, now a stalwart young man.
“If you don’t give up, Mr. Park, it isn’t too late.”
The dimness in Park Seong-u’s eyes gradually lifted. A glimmer of hope seemed to bloom little by little.
“······Do you really think I can see them again? Will my children forgive me?”
“They’re surely waiting for their father. Don’t give up on life. Recover your body and mind so that you can meet them again in good health. That’s the best thing you can do as their father.”
Taeho nodded.
Gihwan added his support from beside him.
“That’s right. Once you recover your health, you’ll be able to see them again.”
“If only that could happen······”
Park Seong-u could no longer continue speaking and sobbed quietly.
Then a small, soft hand touched his face.
When Park Seong-u turned his head, he saw Hayul wiping away his tears with her own hand.
“Don’t cry!”
Hayul spoke. Her expression was nearly blank, but it was clear that she was trying to comfort him.
“Don’t cry.”
“I won’t cry. All right. Mister won’t cry. Uuugh.”
Taeho and Gihwan looked at the two of them and smiled warmly.
***
Office of the Head of the Architecture Department, Samcheok City Hall,
Gwak Byeongdae, the department head who had been discharged the previous week, was sitting in his office chair. He had undergone emergency surgery for a perforated stomach, but his condition had now recovered to a reasonable degree.
The office door opened, and Taeho entered.
“Director Kang, welcome. Please, have a seat over here.”
“How are you feeling, Department Head?”
“Thanks to you, I’m much better. If you hadn’t operated on me yourself that day, I probably wouldn’t even be sitting here now.”
Perhaps the words had stirred his emotions as well, because Gwak Byeongdae lowered his gaze.
Taeho waved his hands dismissively.
“I only did what was natural.”
“I wouldn’t necessarily call it natural. While I was undergoing surgery and staying in the hospital, I thought a great deal. About what I had tried to do to you, Director, and about how you treated me despite that.”
Gwak Byeongdae looked ten years older than he had the last time. It seemed that coming back from the brink of death had affected him deeply.
“If it was only natural for you to treat me that way because you’re a doctor, then as a civil servant, I failed to do what I naturally should have done.”
Taeho merely answered his words with a smile.
“As for the pressure I put on you at City Hall last time under the pretext of the poor condition of the Geumsan Clinic building······ Even if it was the mayor’s order, it was still my fault. There’s no doubt that I failed to judge right from wrong.”
Gwak Byeongdae bit the corner of his mouth and spoke as if reproaching himself.
“To be honest, I took Geumsan-ri lightly because it had a small population and was an underdeveloped neighborhood even within Samcheok. I didn’t understand what Geumsan Clinic, the only hospital for the residents there, meant to them. No—I tried to pretend I didn’t know.”
Taeho remained silent for a moment. He hadn’t expected Gwak Byeongdae to bare his thoughts so openly. It had only been two weeks since they had exchanged sharp words with each other······
It seemed the purpose of his visit today would be achieved more easily than expected.
“It must have been difficult for you as well, Department Head.”
Rather than cornering the other man, Taeho spoke gently.
“But the emergency treatment I gave you was simply what I had to do as a doctor. All I want in return is fair administration.”
At the words “all I want is fair administration,” Gwak Byeongdae bit his lips.
What had he been trying to do to such an admirable young doctor?
Gwak Byeongdae was too ashamed to raise his head. He opened the documents lying on his desk. They contained the report on the structural safety inspection of Geumsan Clinic, along with the additional opinions.
“As you can see, I reexamined the results of the detailed safety inspection and submitted them as an official document from the City Hall Architecture Department. The building itself has no structural problems, and the conclusion is that partial repairs will be enough.”
Gwak Byeongdae pushed the documents toward Taeho.
“I’m going to report this directly to the mayor now.”
“He won’t like that.”
When Taeho nodded as if he already knew, Gwak Byeongdae clenched his molars.
“Even so, I’m certain that this is the right thing to do, so I intend to stand my ground. The mayor won’t be able to do anything about it either.”
“Then I don’t need to worry about the Geumsan Clinic issue anymore?”
“The City Hall may try to raise other objections, but they have no reasonable grounds, and it will be difficult to deny this report.”
Gwak Byeongdae stated firmly.
“Then may I ask one more favor?”
“What······?”
“I’d like to request your support.”
Gwak Byeongdae unconsciously stopped the hand he had placed on the documents and twitched his eyebrows.
“When you say support······ Is this about the Geumsan Clinic expansion plan?”
“It’s a larger project than that. I want to revitalize the abandoned Geumsan Elementary School site.”
Taeho took out the materials he had prepared on the R&D center from his bag and held them out to Gwak Byeongdae.
“I want to establish a regional bio R&D center. It will be a small, integrated research institute incorporating laboratories for heavy-metal poisoning and rare diseases, an AI clinical platform, and even a rehabilitation Fab Lab.”
Gwak Byeongdae took out a notebook and began making notes.
“Let me start with the change-of-use permit. To use the abandoned school site as a research facility, its designation must be changed from an educational facility to a research facility. I can have that procedure processed as quickly as possible.”
He also promised to help with the building permit one-stop service and, most importantly, the application for a national funding project.
It was far more support than Taeho had expected.
Taeho smiled and said,
“Thank you, Department Head. This will be a tremendous help.”
“I won’t spare any administrative support I can provide, Director.”
Gwak Byeongdae added this with a sincere expression.
With the help of Department Head Gwak Byeongdae, Taeho was able to break ground on construction of the research institute in a short time.
It seemed that everything was proceeding smoothly.
***
At 7:40 p.m., the heavy-rain advisory for the coastal region of Gangwon Province was upgraded to a heavy-rain warning.
Amid the pouring rain, the announcer could barely continue speaking.
—Rainfall is expected to exceed 110 millimeters per hour. The risk of landslides is extremely high, so residents are urged to exercise extreme caution.
After finishing the evening clinic at Geumsan Clinic, Taeho gazed out the window at the rain that had begun to fall violently.
Nurse Park Geumja spoke beside him in a worried voice.
“The rain is really coming down. It’s like there’s a hole in the sky.”
“Be careful on your way home.”
Taeho returned to the examination room and sat down.
No matter what he did, he couldn’t settle down.
The R&D construction site was an old abandoned school. Even schools that underwent regular safety inspections and maintained their drainage systems experienced incidents every year in which retaining walls collapsed and landslides flowed in.
Would an abandoned school in a mountainous area, left unattended for so many years, really be all right? On top of that, the drainage pipes had currently been dug up for the remodeling work.
Could the site withstand this kind of torrential rain?
With a troubled expression, he spoke to Rema.
“Rema, connect to the CCTV at the construction site and check it.”
—Understood.
Rema connected the CCTV feed and displayed it in augmented reality.
The empty construction site after the heavy machinery had withdrawn.
A light visible at the edge of the pitch-black screen.
And in front of that light, the wavering outline of a person.
Taeho narrowed his eyes.
“What’s that light?”
—It is a container serving as temporary lodging for the construction workers.
“Someone’s there in weather like this?”
—Analysis of the footage identifies the subject as a human individual.
Taeho hurriedly contacted the site manager. But no matter how many times he called, there was no answer.
Taeho took off his white coat and immediately grabbed his car keys.