He was massive, yet seeing his face drain of color at a single word from me, a chuckle escaped before I knew it. Old my foot—he was still as handsome as ever. If anything, Woo Jiheon looked closer to a typical heartthrob than the boyish face I’d last seen.
The face that had been delicately pretty for a man had gained the added marks of time, exuding an even more attractive and mysterious air. Though hidden by a cast, the frame of his body looked much sturdier than in the past. But not wanting to go out of my way to admit the truth and feed his ego, I feigned indifference and handed him a mirror to check for himself. Woo Jiheon had always suffered from an excess of self-esteem. There was no end to it if you fed him compliments.
“No way, you got so much hotter. Teacher, is your optic nerve aging already? Since you’re at the hospital anyway, why not get an eye exam or something.”
“...Still all talk.”
“Ah, seriously. Stop fussing over trivial things and come here. It’s hard to turn my head, so I can’t see your face well. Let me get a good look at how much you’ve aged.”
...Guess I really have gotten old too. In the past, his impudent tone would have annoyed me first, but now it only drew a hollow laugh. Seeing Woo Jiheon completely unchanged, I even felt as if I’d returned to my early twenties. It was a nostalgic feeling.
As he’d asked, I sat on the companion chair at the head of the bed and looked down at Woo Jiheon. Up close, small bruises still remained all over his body. Rather, my mother’s corpse hadn’t looked like a dead person at all and was merely clean, but the living Woo Jiheon’s body was a wreck. It meant his body was struggling to survive. Thinking that, his tattered body felt terribly pitiful.
“...If it’s too hard to bear, should I ask them to give you more painkillers?”
“Don’t they say there’s a daily limit? And this much, I can just endure. Why make a fuss.”
“I heard everything earlier, you throwing a fit at Jaemin for painkillers.”
“Ah, forget it. So how have you been living all this time?”
“...”
“The last thing I remember is you at twenty-three. You... graduated from university, obviously. Are you a salaryman now? No. If you worked at a company, there’s no way you’d be my caregiver. Don’t tell me you’re unemployed, Teacher? How did that happen?”
“...”
“Thirty-one-year-old Cha Yunseong. Tell me about him. I’m incredibly curious.”
“...I just lived. Like everyone else.”
I couldn’t figure out what to tell Woo Jiheon, who was asking about my past life. There was simply nothing memorable about it. Literally swept away by life. My mother was always sick, money was always lacking, so I was always busy. It had been a life with no room to think about anything. Even the bond with the Woo Jiheon before my eyes had been formed through money. Because at the time, tutoring him had been the highest-paying part-time job I could get with my abilities.
“Come on, nothing’s ever ‘just.’ I thought you’d be super capable and amazing by now. You were a student at a prestigious university. And you didn’t miss out on scholarships either, did you?”
I looked into Woo Jiheon’s eyes full of goodwill for a moment, then changed the subject as if to avoid it. Because I couldn’t say that thirty-one-year-old Cha Yunseong was an outcast who had failed at suicide.
“...By the way, is it really okay for me to be your caregiver?”
“Why wouldn’t it be?”
“...I’m asking if you’ll be uncomfortable. Looking at you now, it seems you can’t even wash yourself alone. If you think it’ll be uncomfortable, another caregiver instead of me—”
“What are you talking about? Having you do it is much more comfortable than some stranger.”
Perhaps thinking I might change my mind, Woo Jiheon grabbed my wrist with his left hand, where the IV was inserted, and spoke urgently. The back of his hand, which had been hidden under his hospital gown, was dotted with IV needle marks here and there. As I silently looked at his bruised hand, Woo Jiheon noticed my gaze and withdrew his hand as if embarrassed.
Truthfully, coming to the hospital to meet him had been an impulsive decision, but that didn’t mean I had come without any resolve. In the past, Woo Jiheon had been strangely obsessed with me, and therefore, reuniting with him was inevitably burdensome. Because I thought this meeting might stir up old feelings in Woo Jiheon.
If he were to confess to me like in the past, I naturally wouldn’t be able to reject him as coldly as I did then. Because I couldn’t deliberately provoke someone lying here after failing at suicide and losing his memory. Nevertheless, I was here now. ...It meant I had come prepared to take responsibility for the situation that would arrive, one way or another.
But fortunately, the eighteen-year-old Woo Jiheon didn’t seem to have any feelings for me yet. No matter how ignorant he was of romance, he wouldn’t feel more comfortable having someone he liked wash him.
Come to think of it, Woo Jiheon had confessed to me in the summer of his senior year. Since his memory was currently stuck in his sophomore year, it would be before his feelings could develop into attraction. He was the type to blurt out whatever came to mind; he wouldn’t have been silently pining for nearly a year.
Thinking so, selfishly, my mind felt much more at ease.
The conversation with Woo Jiheon was naturally cut off when the attending physician entered the hospital room to make his rounds. After a brief consultation, once the doctor left, a nurse came in to change his IV fluids and checked his blood pressure and temperature. After that as well, there was no opening to continue the conversation. Just when I thought I could catch my breath, another nurse entered the room and began examining his knee to disinfect the surgical site.
There was scarcely an unharmed part of Woo Jiheon’s body, but his knee in particular seemed severely injured; when the bandages were removed, a fearsomely long surgical scar stretched out. Seeing him clench his mouth shut and endure despite how much it must hurt, I felt uneasy. My mother enduring chemotherapy came to mind unbidden. Physical pain truly made a person wretched.
Quietly watching the nurse disinfect the surgical site, I approached the window and looked outside. Perhaps because of the endlessly pouring rain, even though it was barely past 4 p.m., deep darkness had settled outside. Gazing at the distant car lights on the ground blurred and faintly diffused by the rainwater, I thought that perhaps because it was an expensive hospital room, even the view was top-notch.
But setting aside the view, Woo Jiheon was someone who had once attempted suicide by jumping. No matter how nice the VIP room was, I felt uneasy about letting him stay in such a high-floor hospital room. Without realizing it, I was locking the window latch when I heard Woo Jiheon call me from behind. I turned around to see that the nurses had already disappeared, leaving him lying alone on the bed.
“Teacher, water, please.”
“...Yeah, sure.”
Since moving was difficult for him, I filled a cup from the water purifier and handed it to him; he received the cup with the only hand he could move, his left. Seeing the back of his left hand, where the IV needle had just been moved, swollen purple, I frowned. Unable to find any more veins on the back of his hand, they had inserted the IV into his wrist—a grotesque sight. Noticing my gaze, he asked brazenly,
“Why are you staring like that, do I look pitiful?”
“...What?”
“Some bastard hit me with his car and ran, they say. Once my legs heal, I’m going to find him and beat him half to death. He ran away after putting me in this state? This is practically attempted murder, isn’t it?”
“...”
“Ha, shi—if I think about how I’m really suffering through this hell, I feel like I could only be satisfied by throwing him in prison....”
How could he beat a nonexistent perpetrator half to death...? Even if I wanted to play along, having nothing to say, I stayed silent. Woo Jiheon interpreted my silence in his own favor and continued.
“Don’t I seem so pitiful right now that it makes you want to treat me well? My legs and arms are broken, my neck is sprained, and apparently I have cracked ribs too. It’s a relief my face is intact—if my face was hurt too, I would’ve really hired a contractor to take out that hit-and-run bastard.”
Good grief... despite not having a single unharmed spot on his body, his mouth prattled on as freely as ever. Honestly, I had felt sorry for him, but his mouth was so unrestrained that my worried feelings were gradually dissipating. Concealing my absurd feelings, I asked what I’d been curious about since the moment I first saw him.
“They say there’s no nerve damage? Will it all heal with time?”
“Wow... are you worrying about me right now, Teacher? Geez, you really have to get hurt to see certain things.”
“...Anyone would worry if the other person was hurt this badly. Just what do you think of me?”
“Well, you’re not wrong, but... you’re not the type to have much sympathy, Teacher. You don’t care much about the people around you.”
“...”