Even so, the doctor pressed Kyungoh’s shoulder firmly with an amazed face. It must have hurt quite a bit since the tendon had degenerated, but there was no suture surgery and no re-rupture either. Is it because he’s an alpha so the tendon tissue properties are a bit different? He was muttering with an interested face. Meanwhile, the resident had completely disappeared.
“So what brings you to the hospital again?”
“I came for a comprehensive checkup. My rut cycle seems to be a bit disrupted.”
“Ah, I see. Get your tests done well.”
Pat pat, the doctor who tapped his shoulder quickly passed by Kyungoh and left.
After the small happening ended, the three people met at a cafe a bit away from the hospital. That resident from earlier muttered with a gloomy face.
“Haah… Jang Wonha. This is really the last time for you.”
“Hyung, thank you. I’ll definitely repay this favor.”
“I really don’t like orthopedics, you know? The professors are all thugs. You saw earlier, right? Those bulging muscles. They’re all from cutting and slicing patients’ bones,”
“Hyung. Don’t worry. I’ll speak well to the Hospital Director.”
“Please do.”
While saying that, the man smoothly held out the paper he’d been hiding. It was the result sheet from Sangho’s retest.
「Lee Sangho’s trait test result is (Omega) determination.」
“Ha… I knew it would be like this.”
Wonha dry-washed his face with a complicated expression. Kyungoh also silently looked at Sangho’s trait test and clenched his fist tightly. This confirmed that someone had switched the trait test results delivered to Sangho’s studio apartment. Since strong alpha pheromones had vibrated inside Sangho’s room around the same time, there was a high probability that it was most likely that bastard who had forcibly imprinted Sangho.
“But who is Lee Sangho?”
“Just… an important person.”
Wonha still muttered with his hand on his forehead as if he had a headache. Then the resident tilted his head and said.
“By any chance, really thin, a bit short… uh, what year was he born… is he twenty-six this year?”
“How do you know, hyung?”
“Ah, is it right? He was quite famous when I was an intern in the psychiatry ward.”
“What?”
Suddenly, Wonha and Kyungoh turned their heads toward the resident simultaneously. The somewhat flustered resident continued speaking while dripping sweat.
“No, well. It might not be him.”
“Is this the person?”
“Uh, yeah. That’s right? After being discharged, he was receiving treatment well, but from one day the contact completely cut off. Professor Kim was really disappointed,”
When Kyungoh quickly held out a photo of Sangho he’d secretly taken, the resident stammered. Then Wonha asked urgently.
“By any chance, after December last year?”
“Huh? How did you know?”
“Damn it, I lost contact from that time too. Why did he go to psychiatry? And not even a local clinic but a tertiary hospital?”
Then the resident hesitated slightly and trailed off.
“That’s patient personal information, so I can’t tell you. I somehow brought out the trait because it’s printed on the resident card too, but that kind of thing is too personal,”
“Hyung. I’ll transfer you to the department you want to go to. It’s not difficult to add one more spot in a popular department in the second half.”
“Ah, it was a unique case. Dissociative fugue.”
As the resident answered quickly, Kyungoh tilted his head. Then the resident added some explanation.
“It was a case that came over with a referral from a primary hospital. It was so unique that even among the psychiatry professors, they were meeting about whether they should write a paper. Dissociative fugue is a kind of memory loss. It’s forgetting the existing personality and living as a completely different personality.”
“You mean… split personality?”
“It’s different from dissociative identity disorder where personalities switch. So, dissociative fugue is when you completely lose memories of the past and create and live with a new identity. Dissociative identity disorder is treated by integrating multiple personalities, but fugue is treated by restoring lost memories while looking at the patient’s condition.”
“But why is that a unique case?”
At Kyungoh’s question, the resident scratched his cheek.
“Hmm… Usually dissociative fugue patients, when the fugue state comes, live as a completely different personality for a few hours or days and eventually return. When the fugue is released, they can’t remember what the new personality did and return to the original personality. So from the patient’s perspective, it can feel like they were walking down the street fine and suddenly teleported to a different area. They can’t remember the fugue state. But… Lee Sangho… had physical changes come along with the fugue state, so it was quite a hot topic in the ward.”
“Physical changes?”
“The imprint mark disappeared.”
Wonha and Kyungoh’s expressions hardened. Wonha, who had been trembling his lips, asked urgently.
“Hyung. Do you know who did the imprinting?”
“I don’t know. He was raped somewhere… and so severely that it caused a mental disorder. Would he easily talk about something like that?”
“You said he received treatment for a long time.”
“Uh… since he received it for about 3 years. Professor Kim from the psychiatry department who counseled him might know.”
“Aren’t there counseling records? When transferring from the primary hospital, all the records come over.”
“…Jang Wonha. This really won’t do even for me. In the first place, psychiatry records can’t even be viewed unless you’re the professor in charge of that department.”
The resident stood up from his seat quickly with a somewhat fed-up face. Then Wonha desperately grabbed the resident’s coat.
“Hyung…”
“Ha… I said it really won’t do. Rather, ask Professor Kim Seokhun directly. But he’s such an upright person that it won’t be easy.”
“A-aren’t there any other details?”
“Hmm. I heard he was a bit peculiar during the fugue state. There was almost nothing different from the existing personality, but he was living in a worldview where traits didn’t exist at all. Alpha, omega, beta. He couldn’t understand these things themselves.”
The resident who said that quickly looked at his watch and rapidly disappeared, saying he had to return to the hospital.
Crack
After leaving Dohyun’s room, Sangho stood in the hallway for a long while. His knees were trembling so badly that if he moved even slightly, he felt like he’d collapse right there on the spot.
Staggering back to his cleaning area, Sangho picked up the mop handle that had been tossed aside. As he’d grown closer to the sparkling Wonha, Sangho had felt like he’d become someone important. But Wonha was the grandson of an influential political figure and a successful celebrity, while he was just a janitor. And it wasn’t like he was the self-made type with exceptional talent like Han Kyungoh either.
“……”
As he silently cleaned the remaining area, Sangho slowly mulled over Dohyun’s words. He didn’t want to believe the things about Wonha’s complicated views on relationships or what his preferences were. At the very least, it was very different from the Wonha he’d been seeing.
But he knew well enough that he and Wonha didn’t match. Wonha was a well-raised young master, and he was a wretched life no different from a lone orphan. Lee Sangho’s life before the possession and Lee Sangho’s life after hadn’t changed much. If even he thought this way, what would Wonha’s parents or family members think?
Thinking about it, living alone playing games in a dirty, cramped semi-basement villa wasn’t so bad either. After meeting Wonha, he’d felt the world become more sparkling and beautiful. But holding such good things, such pretty things in his shabby hands seemed too much for him. More precisely, he felt like he absolutely couldn’t endure it if he possessed it and then had it taken away.
In the bluish dawn hallway, Sangho’s shoulders trembled for a moment. He let out a deep sigh again and resumed cleaning as if nothing had happened.
After finishing his shift that day, Sangho trudged back home. Getting off the bus, Sangho alternately looked across the main road between Kyungoh’s side where the apartments stood tall and his own studio apartment side where low, old villas were packed tightly together. He remembered the belongings he’d left at Kyungoh’s apartment, but he didn’t want to go back there. For now, let’s spend the weekend at the studio. With that thought, Sangho crossed the street and entered the villa made of stacked red bricks.
“……Huh?”
But something was strange. There was a 1-ton truck parked in front of his studio apartment. The truck bed was piled high with boxes and some furniture as if someone had moved in. Is someone else moving in? As Sangho entered through the communal entrance, his jaw dropped in shock. His room door was wide open, and inside, moving boxes were piled up everywhere.
“No, no. What are you doing?”
“Huh?”
“This is my studio apartment.”
“What are you talking about? I already signed a contract for this place.”
