“Ah! Now that I think about it, do you know that rumor?”
“What rumor?”
“The rumor that our research institute has Research Lab 0.”
“Huh? What are you talking about?”
Surim looked at Ji Seongchan with suspicious eyes and asked back. Research Lab 0? There was no way such a suspicious research lab could exist. Early in his employment, he’d searched the intranet out of curiosity to see what departments existed at the research institute, but even then he hadn’t seen anything like Research Lab 0.
“No, I’m telling you that rumor really exists. It’s not a public research lab but supposedly a research lab directly under some director.”
“A secret research lab directly under a director…”
It was a phrase that would appear in some dystopian zombie movie.
“Say something that makes sense. You believe that?”
“Well, I don’t believe it. But it’s fun, isn’t it?”
“Hmm… That’s certainly true.”
“Right? And they’re making things like robots there…”
“No, that seems like a different specialty.”
“It’s imagination, what does it matter.”
Surim looked at Ji Seongchan with eyes that said there was no helping it and shook his head side to side. Even though he was talking nonsense, not being hateful about it might be the secret, if there was one, to Ji Seongchan’s wide network.
The two sat on a bench and had meaningless conversation between office workers who wanted to go home. Even while responding to Ji Seongchan’s nonsense, all of Surim’s attention was directed at the man he’d met earlier.
What department was he working in? Why hadn’t they run into each other once during the past three months? If he wasn’t a research institute employee but someone on a brief business trip…
Then they might never meet again. Unlike when he graduated from university, it was a separation he wasn’t mentally prepared for at all.
“……”
The office they returned to after resting for about thirty minutes was fortunately not noisy. The irritation had also disappeared from Assistant Manager Seong’s face after successfully handling the urgent matter.
As soon as Ji Seongchan spotted her, he strode over to her. Surim also followed behind him with a bewildered face, caught off guard.
Assistant Manager Seong, who had been drinking coffee through a straw, turned her chair to face the two.
“Assistant Manager Seong.”
“Mm?”
“I heard a rumor.”
“A rumor?”
Surim looked at Ji Seongchan in alarm. So it wasn’t just talk they’d brought up to kill time between themselves? Could he possibly seriously believe it?
“That our research institute has Research Lab 0…”
“What kind of nonsense is that?”
“Ah, no, the rumor really…”
“Who did you hear that bullshit from?”
“Uh… Well…”
“Never mind, tell them not to spread weird rumors.”
Assistant Manager Seong clicked her tongue and spoke again.
“Same goes for you, Ji Seongchan-ssi.”
“Yes…”
Assistant Manager Seong’s gaze whipped toward Surim. Surim pressed his lips tightly shut and quickly shook his head. Eyes that seemed both bothered and annoyed poked at Surim before moving to the monitor. Assistant Manager Seong waved her hand to shoo the two gullible new employees away from her spot.
* * *
Standing in the hospital corridor, Surim took a deep breath in front of the door. Surim overlaid a bright expression onto his worried face and flung the door wide open.
“Hyung, I’m here!”
“Surim-ah.”
Seeing Surim, who had been sitting leaning against the hospital bed, he put down his tablet. Surim, who rushed over as if flying, pulled over a chair to sit and buried his head deeply against the bed.
“Ahhh, I’m so tired I could die. Today they had me carry some cabinet.”
“You worked hard. You carried a cabinet?”
“Yeah, it’s too much.”
“My little brother is strong.”
Jin Suyeong admiringly pulled Surim’s wrist over to compare it with his own. Surim was thin too, but Jin Suyeong’s forearm was practically nothing but bone, so there was a comparison.
“Looking at the thickness of your wrist, I can see why. I don’t think I could even lift the ‘ca’ in cabinet.”
“Hyung, I told you not to make self-deprecating jokes…”
Surim rolled his eyes into triangles and continued speaking while kneading his hyung’s wrist.
“Once you get better, hyung, things will be different, right? I hate exercise and you like it. Your wrist might become as thick as my forearm.”
“Right, you used to run away when I suggested playing soccer.”
“I hate ball games…”
Strangely, even when Surim looked at the ball properly and kicked it, he’d always miss. It wasn’t just soccer. He was bad at catching flying balls too, and he’d never properly made a basket in basketball.
Surim, who had puckered his lips, changed the subject.
“What were you doing?”
“What I do is obvious.”
Saying that, Jin Suyeong showed him the tablet screen. A map app had reviews of some restaurant scrolling down. It was a restaurant he’d never seen before. Surim reflexively checked the star next to the restaurant name. It was marked with a yellow star as a favorite.
Watching food blogs or YouTube, carefully selecting future places to visit and bookmarking them, then steadily monitoring trends was one of Jin Suyeong’s few hobbies.
“Is it a new restaurant?”
“Yeah. It’s a bibimbap place near here, and they say they can make it vegetarian too. We could both eat deliciously here. Right?”
“Yeah. It looks delicious.”
With sesame oil generously sprinkled making it glisten, it was a visual that couldn’t not be delicious. Surim licked his lips.
“Wait, at this time you probably came without eating dinner.”
“What about hyung?”
“I ate earlier. But I left half.”
“What? How can you leave food?”
Surim frowned sharply.
“If you haven’t eaten, I was going to eat dinner with you. Surim-ah, let’s order this. Okay?”
“…Isn’t hyung not allowed to eat this kind of thing?”
“It’s fine. I asked earlier. Now I can eat regular food about once a week.”
“Really?”
“That’s what they said.”
Only then did Surim smile broadly, relieved. Surim opened the delivery order app and searched for the bibimbap place to order two bowls. He added the steamed eggs that his hyung liked.
“It’s been a while since we ate together. Right?”
“Yeah, since I’m working at the company, I don’t have much time to be with hyung.”
“My little brother is working hard.”
“Mmm. Should I just quit the company? Since we have money…”
When Surim hugged Jin Suyeong’s waist and whined while acting spoiled, Jin Suyeong laughed softly. Jin Suyeong, who had been confined to the hospital unable to take a single step out since his minor days, liked it when Surim acted childish like those times, even while pretending not to.
Gently stroking his little brother’s back, Jin Suyeong whispered.
“Still, you need to go to the company. I want my little brother to normally work hard at the company, date prettily, eat lots of delicious things.”
Because I can’t. Though he didn’t say it, Surim read the words hidden behind the period. When he glanced up, Jin Suyeong smiled gently.
“…If hyung tells me to go, I have to go…”
“What about dating?”
“I’m not really interested in dating.”
Even while saying that, Surim was unconsciously thinking of the man he’d seen during the day. It was true that he wasn’t interested in dating, but he didn’t know why that was.
While they were chatting like that, a notification came that the food had arrived.
“Hyung, I’ll go get the food and come back.”
“Okay. Hurry back.”
Jin Suyeong seemed quite excited about tonight’s dinner. It was obvious from watching him fit the detachable table onto the bed as soon as Surim lifted himself from his knees.
Surim, who smiled as if he couldn’t help it, hurried downstairs to get the food. Receiving a large bag from the delivery person on the first floor, Surim felt inexplicably excited feeling the warm temperature.
It was the first time he and his hyung were eating delivery food together. Their parents had overprotected their hyung who had originally been weak, and treated Surim like a bothersome burden. It wasn’t that they didn’t eat delivery food at home, but Surim wasn’t at that table.
There was no real reason for it. The second child who came unexpectedly to a couple who had been trying to carefully care for and save their frail only son. Looking at the healthy child unlike the first, the couple came to harbor inexplicable hatred. That was all.
That daily life continued until the summer when he was fifteen, when his parents took his hyung on a 4-night 5-day trip and left the world in a traffic accident. The brothers became orphans that day, and Surim, even with a chicken leg in his hand, did everything he could to save his hyung who had only cared about him.
Nevertheless, his hyung, whose body had been originally weak, didn’t recover well. His stomach was equally weak so he couldn’t eat foods with strong stimulation.
Only recently had he been able to speak energetically like now and eat food well without vomiting. If he got a little healthier and could walk well, then they could take walks together, go to amusement parks, go see movies…
Surim, who had been continuing pleasant thoughts, stopped short while walking down the corridor. Nurses were crowded in front of his hyung’s hospital room.
“Hyung!”
Surim burst out shouting and ran. Inside the hospital room were nurses moving busily, his hyung collapsed on the bed, and a doctor performing CPR on top of him. Everything around was chaotic, yet Surim felt no sense of reality, as if separated from all the events.
It was something he’d been prepared for a long time. Since his hyung had always been slowly dying, he’d been prepared that this could happen at any time.
But there was too great a difference between imagining despair and experiencing it directly. Much more so when the despair came while dreaming of hope.
