It was an arduous day. On a tangled, messy day, only old wounds remained.
Lee Yeon sat on the sofa cradling a cherished flower pot. She wanted comfort from the characteristic stillness of plants—they didn't bite, they didn't squirm, they didn't even answer back.
Without thinking, she looked up at the second floor and startled.
"What a surprise...!"
Lee Yeon shook her head as if scolding herself.
What does that vegetative man have to do with anything? How ominous.
It was a peaceful week. The ordinary days without incident that Lee Yeon had so desperately wanted. Yet strangely, the better Kwon Chae-woo slept, the more sleepless nights Lee Yeon had.
Having caused all sorts of commotion even if for a short while, she realized how desolate this tranquil night felt. She was being crushed by random thoughts that swelled for no reason.
She didn't want to admit it, but those two years were a time when a person and a "plant" coexisted, finding their own balance in this strange living arrangement.
Perhaps it was fated from the moment Lee Yeon, excessively fearful, began checking every night whether the vegetative man was truly a vegetative man.
"Ugh, no. No. Don't think about anything..."
Lee Yeon was frowning with her nose buried in a herb leaf.
Hm?
She raised her head sensitively.
"――!"
A faint sound of a young beast came from somewhere. She tilted her head back with a face full of wariness. Then the staircase that immediately came into view seemed particularly suspicious today.
Her hesitation was brief. Lee Yeon climbed the stairs with long strides and opened without hesitation the door with its lock torn off and left gaping.
A soft light glowing by the bedside.
The man was motionless enough to be mistaken for a taxidermied specimen.
'...Something definitely made a sound.'
Lee Yeon placed her finger on Kwon Chae-woo's philtrum. His even breath touched her skin.
Was it not here?
She was scratching her head and looking around.
The man's tightly closed lips slowly parted before her eyes. In that moment, Lee Yeon instinctively stiffened her whole body. But what was visible beyond the lips was not teeth, but a sob.
"Hu..."
Lee Yeon froze from her ankles up. Kwon Chae-woo was crying. A large drop fell from the corner of his eye where a subtle curve ended.
"—Ma..."
He mumbled something. His parched lips, devoid of moisture, kept spewing out words.
"...Go. Hurry, go..."
He was contorting his entire face as if in pain. Was he having a nightmare? Lee Yeon's pupils wavered.
What business does a murderer have having nightmares?
If he lived doing bad things all this time, it's only fitting he'd have nightmares.
It's all karma.
With such crooked and somewhat satisfying thoughts, she looked down at him.
But even if she deliberately looked at him coldly, Lee Yeon's gaze was fixed on the man's tears. He was now even gasping for breath.
"Hide me..."
"..."
"—Forget..."
The man spoke in fragments, words barely comprehensible, yet his emotions were strangely vivid. He looked urgent, he looked sorrowful.
"Hide me...!"
His sculpted handsome features contorted painfully. Lee Yeon didn't know what to do, repeatedly raising and lowering her arms.
'Ms. Chuja, isn't this not a benevolent man but more like a deer?'
When Chuja clapped her hands calling Kwon Chae-woo a benevolent man upon seeing his appearance. Lee Yeon nodded to some extent. Except, rather than a celestial maiden who lost her clothes and wept bitterly, he was the type to snap the neck of someone who was peeking.
But right now, doesn't he look just like someone fleeing breathlessly?
"—Live..."
Lee Yeon deliberated unwillingly. She turned away as if to ignore him but kept glancing at him. After clenching and unclenching her hands and groaning in distress, she finally wiped his deeply soaked eyes.
The moment she touched the man's fevered skin, static sparked. She startled and pulled her hand away, speaking with a somewhat softened face.
"It seems Mr. Kwon Chae-woo doesn't like sleeping."
"..."
"I don't like you waking up, though."
"...Must —."
Thinking about it, she had always faced either a face sleeping like death or hollow pupils that had lost their memories. But watching this man suddenly spew out sorrow felt strange. She quickly wiped the tears on her fingertips onto her pajamas.
So you were human after all. I wished you weren't.
"Even if Mr. Kwon Chae-woo never wakes up, I won't feel guilt, a little, no, almost won't feel it."
Lee Yeon busily brushed away her petty thoughts.
"I don't even feel as much sympathy as I do for the street trees."
Soon Lee Yeon let out a deep, inexplicable sigh and sat on a chair. With her chin resting on her knees, she rattled on as she used to.
"At least they're clear and pure. Mr. Kwon Chae-woo belongs to the toxic and murky kind. Do you know how difficult that is to handle? Do you know how scary carnivorous plants are?"
And—
"Don't cry."
Lee Yeon continuously wiped away his tears with a clouded expression.
"You should wipe your own tears."
"..."
"Crying didn't help me either. Because no one listened."
Only the trees, only the flowers that smiled with each season, listened to Lee Yeon's stories. To Lee Yeon who had never made a single friend, they were her only affection and promise.
"I tasted the soil under the tree today. It was very salty. It shouldn't taste like that normally."
"..."
"Are Mr. Kwon Chae-woo's tears like that too?"
Whether to save Kwon Chae-woo from his nightmare or leave him be was now up to Lee Yeon. She leaned forward and whispered to him.
"Who poured seawater into you?"
The man answered nothing, only furrowing his brow. Wrinkles formed recklessly along the bridge of his nose that naturally extended from his forehead. Kwon Chae-woo kept letting out gasping groans like breath.
Lee Yeon pouted her lips and grumbled.
"Today you look like the ginkgo tree at the sushi restaurant."
Even knowing it's a dangerous delusion, there are times when you want to be deceived. Lee Yeon faced him with the feeling of downing an even more potent medicine to forget the lingering fever she'd had all day and the meaning of today.
"It's a birthday present."
—Actually, today was a day I wanted to cry too.
Lee Yeon carefully lay down beside the man.
* * *
An indescribable sound, sharply twisted, pierces his mind.
Kwon Chae-woo blinked his heavy eyes then raised his arm against the pouring sunlight. But before he could fully cover his eyes, the back of his hand bumped into something with a thud, stinging. Quietly narrowing his brow, he turned his head.
"..."
There lay So Lee Yeon, sleeping soundly, completely unaware of the world. Clinging to the inside of his arm like a barnacle, even squirming and smacking her lips. At the sight, Kwon Chae-woo froze, speechless. At the same time, his mind snapped awake as if doused with ice water.
He seemed to have been shouldering a painful and difficult dream. Yet the moment he saw her, it vanished as if by magic.
This person named 'Kwon Chae-woo' must have been born stupid, or perhaps his head goes completely empty at the slightest stimulation.
So Lee Yeon.
Wife.
Tree doctor.
Accident.
Kwon Chae-woo chewed over the few things that came to mind while looking at the woman before him. Each one was information he'd learned by hearing, nothing special. Finding it irritating, he clicked his tongue.
He remembers the beginning.
The moment cells that had been stopped woke up simultaneously, awakening his senses. That first memory was some woman.
When he was pressing down on her back and smelling the nape of her neck. He couldn't forget that strange fishy scent tangled with wet grass and soil.
The moment his memories were completely carved out was heavier and more nauseating than expected.
In the hollow where family, friends, memories, all of it had sunk, only one person flickered. That thing is the key.
That was a whisper close to instinct. The decision was made unbelievably fast. Since the only thing sitting in his empty head was So Lee Yeon's face, he accepted her like swallowing her in one bite.
But the more he looked, the stranger So Lee Yeon seemed.
'...A wife you don't even remember suddenly appears. From Mr. Kwon Chae-woo's perspective, I was worried about how bewildering and uncomfortable this must be...'
No, I understood at a glance. Why you're the wife. Why you could only be the wife.
Even the time to look away felt wasteful.
'Kw, Kwon Chae-woo. Mr. Kwon Chae-woo.'
Yet, the body that trembled while claiming to be his wife.
Eyes eaten away by fear.
The smooth fourth finger without a single ring mark.
A house without even a single wedding photo.
Not even a speck of joy at her husband waking from a vegetative state could be found. Bizarrely, fear was all there was. Whenever she flinched, he wanted to grab that tiny chin of hers and ask.
When you're everything in my world that has nothing.
Why are you afraid of me? Why won't you smile for me?
If it's going to be this difficult, why did you nurse me and why did you wait.
"Are you awake?"
Just then So Lee Yeon rubbed her eyes and gave her morning greeting.
As he propped his upper body with his elbow and only stared silently, her expression gradually stiffened.