On a bed connected to all sorts of wires and machines.
The man was sleeping as if dead.
With his eyes closed, his age was impossible to gauge. His eye shape with subtly upturned ends was fierce, and his sharply descending nose tip boasted a sleek elegance.
However, his large body that had stood out even in the dark mountains had been gradually whittled away over the course of two years. Still, his broad, square shoulders seemed to be his natural frame, unchanged even when muscles faded from elsewhere.
"Hoo..."
At the thought of the past two years, a heavy sigh escaped as if it had been waiting.
Vegetative state.
A patient who lacks consciousness but only performs vegetative activities such as breathing and circulation.
I-yeon slumped into the chair and rubbed her face dry. No matter how much of a tree doctor she was, thinking back on it, it was an utterly absurd contract.
Even so, for a patient who only performs vegetative activities. With a man's body lying there so prominently.
Accepting this thing so hastily was the result of a coward's premature surrender and loss of judgment.
Moreover, he was no ordinary personality.
'Don't I need to run away?'
She frantically swung tools, thwack, thwack, but the man remained immovable. Even when blood traces appeared on the saw's edge.
Panicked, I-yeon resigned herself to ending her life right there—but
At least let me see the killer's face properly before I die.
Let me visit him every night and torment him with every wicked deed a ghost can do. Surely it would become his guilt. She turned to look at the man.
The moment she clearly witnessed his pupils, which had been hidden under the hood.
She had the illusion that the man had relaxed his strength. While startled by something, he devoured I-yeon's gaze greedily. For some reason, he clenched his jaw.
—Thwack!
And then it happened in an instant.
Someone had struck the back of the man's head with a rock, thwack, thwack, thwack. The attacker was someone who had been being buried alive, their whole body sticky with dirt and blood.
The killer cursed and tried desperately to keep his eyes open, but eventually collapsed and rolled down the mountainside.
"Mr. Kwon Chae-woo."
I-yeon tried the still unfamiliar and rough name on her tongue.
"Please... don't wake up."
She wanted to live quietly, long, without complications. That was her only unchanging wish since she had run away from home.
How great a privilege living ordinarily and boringly is for some people, I-yeon already knew to her bones.
"I only accepted you because you were a vegetative patient. Since you can't move or speak. I find such friends relatively easier."
"......"
"So please, don't wake up."
"......"
At that moment, I-yeon did not know that the man's fingertips had moved as if flicking.
* * *
"I-yeon, it's time to wake from your dream now."
Inside an office where flower pots stacked layer upon layer on a dressing table, and shovels arranged by size and color caught the eye.
Gye Choo-ja suddenly thrust her phone forward. I-yeon, who had been writing a treatment log, raised her head at the profile photo shining brightly in her eyes.
"What is this?"
"The Solre Landscaping Company's son."
I-yeon rolled only her eyes to check the photo and rounded her lips. A short exclamation of "Oh" came out, but she soon withdrew her gaze. At the response that was so plain it bordered on indifferent, Gye Choo-ja frowned.
"Is that it?"
"Department Head, is your new romance partner your grandson's age?"
"Not me, you!"
"What?"
When I-yeon looked at her clearly again, she let out a heavy sigh.
"You've worked hard enough. We can't hold on like this."
"Department Head."
I-yeon put strength in both eyebrows.
"Already all the big contracts are cut off. D Hospital people's methods are no joke."
I-yeon stubbornly kept her mouth shut and looked at her. She put strength in her entire face to hide the defeatism that threatened to burst out like a sneeze.
D University Agricultural Biology Department Affiliated Hospital.
A large tree hospital that had built a new five-story building and even established its own research lab under its umbrella.
D Hospital, having made such a showy entrance into Hwaido, launched aggressive hospitality toward landscaping companies, nurseries, construction firms, agricultural corporations, and more, then eventually swallowed that massive network of connections all at once.
I-yeon's hospital was not safe from those repercussions.
Contracts that had been made by the year vanished in an instant, and only the next-door grandmother's flower bed, the community center's health checkups, and phone calls from clients wanting to negotiate rang sporadically.
"This won't do. We need to find another way, don't we?"
"Then should we clean up here too and get jobs at D Hospital?"
Her voice was tinged with underlying resentment. It was a sarcastic remark mocking how individual business owners in Hwaido were crawling into the large hospital one by one.
"Goodness, you'd be lucky to just get a job quietly. Don't just scribble curses in bathroom stalls."
Choo-ja snorted as if you'd be obedient.
A few years ago, a golf course development permit had been issued for Hwaido. Back then, while environmental activists had lain down in front of excavators in protest, this timid tree doctor had thrown clumps of strongly fertilizer-smelling dirt at an excavator and run away.
And watching her back as she giggled and mixed special fertilizer again, Gye Choo-ja realized, 'The schemes of these gutsy types are more troublesome than expected.'
"You're good at something. Playing clever tricks."
She held out her phone screen again.
"Then we have to take back the contracts we lost, don't we?"
"......!"
Confirming Choo-ja's ominous eyes, I-yeon immediately hardened her face. Her scheme was obvious, shoving the man's photo in her face and saying this.
"Go and just have some tea and come back."
"Wh-what."
I-yeon unconsciously pulled her body back.
"Solre's son came to Korea for a matchmaking meeting. If this isn't an opportunity, what is? I, Gye Choo-ja, have already gotten a waiting number. Go and at least exchange names."
At that, the pale I-yeon shook her head.
"The intention is too impure. I'm not going. I'm not a gold digger!"
"What kind of nonsense is that!"
Gye Choo-ja raised her voice as if dumbfounded.
"Do you know, I-yeon? You don't have the vessel or the character to be a gold digger anyway. Stop acting special."
I-yeon's face flushed red. Unlike I-yeon who only wore work clothes, Choo-ja was always perfectly dressed from head to toe. I-yeon found herself newly captivated by such beautiful Choo-ja.
"A girl who scratches her arm at the mention of love, how would she handle that."
She, who still wore only heels past sixty, pointed elegantly with her finger.
"And think properly. Where's romance these days? Men are everywhere checking faces, bodies, jobs, family backgrounds, and nowadays even common sense and spending habits. And you're examining over a single cup of tea!"
"Well, I mean..."
I-yeon rubbed the edge of the desk and trailed off.
"It's not like I gave you a hotel key!"
The one who should really cry "goodness" and suffer misunderstanding was actually this side. While clicking her tongue at Department Head Gye's freewheeling romance, I-yeon dropped her shoulders as if defeated.
"...But where did you hear that?"
"What?"
The tone with clear inflection sounded somewhat haughty.
"About Solre's son returning. And what's this waiting number."
At that, Gye Choo-ja raised one eyebrow meaningfully.
"Solre's old man tipped me off."
"Huh? The chairman? Why would he..."
"Why? Because he used to be involved with Geumma."
"Choo-ja!"
She jumped in place and blurted out the old form of address without realizing it.
Choo-ja's colorful love stories had something of a cruel fairy tale quality for I-yeon, whose experience was meager.
I-yeon, who had to figure out how to use a sanitary pad on her own, had met Choo-ja at seventeen.
Choo-ja taught her more complicated and secret things, but the teenage girl was conservative. Choo-ja did her best, but I-yeon, who considered love poison, had covered her ears.
"A reliable spouse isn't something you find by fate, it's something you choose with foresight."
"......"
"In this short life where we only eat the good things, if you act anachronistically, you'll only be left with rotten bread crumbs."
While Choo-ja was absorbed in her preaching, I-yeon quickly fled the scene. Because the extremely Confucian girl was too different from the flashy grandmother.
"Hey you brat, you're going to spend your whole life alone!"
* * *
Night covers all sounds.
In the room where darkness and silence had settled, some shadow was climbing the stairs. Creak, creak, the footsteps that continued cautiously eventually reached the end.
Dong, dong, dong—
The long grandfather clock, purchased to commemorate the opening, announced midnight.
Going to the second floor every night had long become part of I-yeon's routine.
At first it was just an excuse to check once. The sight of the killer lying powerlessly was ridiculous, and to remind herself of her position as the subordinate.
But now she went to find 'it' to finish the day. To confirm with her own eyes that her daily life would be safe tomorrow as well.
A doctor who treats trees, watching a vegetative patient's misfortune with folded hands.
"......"
Soon I-yeon familiarly entered the password and turned the doorknob.