I heard the sound of rain.
Pitter-patter. The sound of it striking the ground and shattering.
A white face, twisted with sorrow beyond the curtain of rain.
Somewhere in my consciousness, classical music drifted faintly.
And then I opened my eyes.
A cold day in January. The day I broke free from the long spell of sleep.
Back home.
I stood at the front gate and slowly looked around the garden.
It was a view I had seen every single day, yet somehow everything felt strangely fresh now. And perhaps because winter had only just passed and it was the vague cusp of spring, it all felt somehow shabby and barren.
They said I had been lying in a coma for six years after the traffic accident.
They said my injuries had healed, but the brain damage from the impact had kept me unconscious the whole time.
But my parents had firmly believed I would open my eyes someday, and so they chose to continue life-sustaining treatment. So one can imagine what the family’s reaction must have been when I — who had shown no response for six years with a respirator attached — miraculously opened my eyes two months ago.
By unfortunate coincidence, the person who happened to be by my side the moment I woke up was my insufferable younger hyung, Shin Haechan. The instant our eyes met, he broke down and sobbed. It was the first time I had ever seen Shin Haechan cry like that — I had just woken up from a long sleep, and I thought I was dreaming again.
“Hey, why are you just standing there like an idiot?”
Just as I’d spaced out for a moment, a gruff voice from behind immediately embarrassed me.
Shin Haechan smacked the back of my head and walked ahead into the house, swaggering as he went.
Ugh, seriously, that guy—!
If it were like before, I would’ve kicked him in the shin from behind. But the pitiful state I was in now meant my legs trembled if I walked even a little too much — all I could do was stand there leaning on my crutches and glare at that infuriating back of his head.
There he was, crying with that ugly face of his the moment I woke up — and then for the entire duration of my rehabilitation, he made a point of coming all the way to my hospital room just to stare at me and nitpick everything. When I tried to hold a pencil and practice writing, he mocked me for having ugly fingernails. When I was practicing walking with a mobility aid, he filmed it and laughed, saying I should take a look at how I walked.
While my eyelids were twitching with irritation, my older hyung, who had brought my belongings from the hospital room, spoke to me warmly.
“Haehyeon, isn’t it hard standing like that? Want hyung to carry you on his back?”
I shook my head at my older hyung, who looked ready to crouch down and carry me at any moment.
“I’m fine, hyung. I can walk on my own.”
Haejun hyung was the complete opposite of the younger one — he still thought of me as a baby.
He had always been overprotective, but since I had come back from the brink of death, it had gotten worse. During rehabilitation, whenever I managed to pick up a spoon with my hand or barely stand on my own two feet, he would give me a standing ovation right there beside me.
I made my way toward the front door, slowly taking in the garden as I walked on my crutches.
I never thought the path from the gate to the front door would feel this long.
It was a path I used to run down every day when I came home from school.
“Honey, look at how composed our son is. Our little rice pup is something else.”
Mom and Dad, who had been briefly chatting with Driver Park, joined the group by my older hyung’s side and called me by my childhood nickname. Three people stood ready to catch me the instant I might fall.
Their eyes sparkled like young parents watching their baby take its first steps — it was almost too much to bear.
“Everyone, please stop — I’m begging you! I’ve been dying of embarrassment since the hospital.”
I covered my reddening face with one hand and pleaded.
What kind of parents marvel at their eighteen — no, twenty-four-year-old son just for walking?
Heat flooded my ears and the back of my neck, and when Dad noticed, he let out a hearty laugh, saying “Haehyeon’s such a shy one.”
Even at the hospital, they said recovering enough to walk on my own just two months after regaining consciousness was remarkable.
My body had been strong from years of ballet, built like an athlete — and since I was the kind of person who couldn’t stand staying still and always had to keep moving, I gritted my teeth and threw myself into rehabilitation. Thanks to that, I managed to end my unbearable hospital life a little earlier than expected.
Still, I had a long way to go. Six years ago, my body had been lighter and more agile than anyone’s. I could sprint, spin, and leap — honed by years of training. My mind, calibrated to that, simply couldn’t adapt to this new state of my body. My heart was already running, but my actual body was sluggish, dull, and tired easily.
It was enough to make me sigh — but still, well, wasn’t it something just to be alive?
By anyone’s measure, this was practically dying and coming back to life.
What matters is that I can breathe now and that my body can get better. Yes, absolutely. Definitely.
I kept nodding to myself inwardly.
Cheered on by the ridiculous encouragement of Dad, Mom, and Haejun hyung, I had barely made it to the front door when it slowly swung open.
In that instant, something like an enormous ball of fluff burst out from the gap in the door and came charging straight at me.
“Woof! Woof, woof!”
A massive Samoyed, with no regard for its own size, excitedly tried to wrap its front paws around my waist — and just like that, I lost my grip on my crutches and tipped sideways. Fortunately, my older hyung immediately caught me and saved me from making a fool of myself.
“No way… you, are you Haeyong?”
“Woof woof!”
“My goodness. When did you get so big? Yongyong, do you remember your hyung?”
Haeyong barked and wagged his tail like a windmill, as if of course he remembered. He sniffed endlessly, licked me, bounced in place — it was pure chaos, and I could feel how beside himself with joy he was.
Mom, Dad, and my hyung burst out laughing at the enthusiastic welcome.
“Our Haeyong is amazing. Hyung, how old is Haeyong now? He just turned six and a month, right?”
“That’s right. He’s grown a lot, hasn’t he?”
“Yeah. He’s become so impressive.”
The Samoyed I remembered was so much smaller back then — just four months old.
I patted Haeyong as he furiously licked my hands, laughing softly. The fluffy fur felt like it was tickling not just my fingertips, but somewhere deep in my chest.
I really am home. It felt warm, just like the soft white fur of a Samoyed.
My room on the second floor was waiting for me, exactly as it had always been.
Mom suggested I use the first-floor room for the time being since going up and down stairs would be difficult — but I had missed my room so much that I insisted on going up anyway.
“It really is exactly the same.”
“We only cleaned it — we didn’t touch a single thing in the room.”
Haejun hyung didn’t take his eyes off me until I had sat down in my chair and leaned my crutches against the side of the desk.
And sure enough, even the workbooks and books piled haphazardly on the desk were untouched. Left at an angle, not neatly aligned — just the way my habit had always left them.
The outside world had changed quite a bit, but this room hadn’t changed at all, as if time had stopped. Only the boxes stacked on one side of the table were unfamiliar.
“Hyung, what’s all that?”
“Ah. Birthday presents. Since everyone prepared one every year, there ended up being quite a few. Open them slowly when you have time.”
Six birthdays had passed for me in the meantime, so it made sense.
What were they all thinking as they marked my birthdays? What went through their minds when the gift from the previous year still sat unwrapped as the next year came?
I stared blankly at the boxes and let myself think thoughts that felt oddly out of place — thoughts that ached.
“Haehyeon, I’ll come get you when it’s time for dinner. Get some rest.”
“Okay.”
Haejun hyung stroked my hair out of old habit and turned to leave. I stopped him with my voice.
“Hyung.”
“Yeah?”
“Um… thank you. For waiting for me.”
“…….”
“I slept a little too long, didn’t I.”
Haejun hyung turned and looked at me quietly without a word.
For some reason, I couldn’t look directly at my hyung’s face — as neat as his character. If I did, I felt like I might cry, so I turned my gaze slightly to the side. If I cry, I’ll look as ugly as Shin Haechan. I don’t want that.
“I guess I slept all the sleep I’ll ever need in one go. Maybe I won’t need to sleep a single hour for the rest of my life.”
When I made that lighthearted joke, hyung let out a small laugh.
“I knew you’d wake up. We never gave up on you, not once. Not ever, Haehyeon.”
I really am lucky.
Even though six years had been erased from my life, my family had waited for me, unchanged.
“You must have been startled to suddenly be twenty-four… but you can take it slow. You know that, right?”
“Yeah, of course.”
I smiled. Hyung ran his big hand over my hair one more time, then stepped out.
I had been holding my breath — and let it all out at once. Thankfully, no tears came.
Family.
The unchanging.
Dreams.
The ones that can no longer be fulfilled in this life.
Friends.
…They’ve all forgotten me by now, haven’t they?
In my sense of time, they were people I had only parted from two months ago. But from their perspective, enough time had passed for them to graduate from high school and university and step into the working world.
I was probably just remembered as “a decent kid from school days who got into an accident one day, and then disappeared — a sad friend no one knew the fate of.”
“Still…”
I picked up the picture frame from the desk.
Inside the spotless frame — not a speck of dust on it — was a photo of me in my middle school graduation gown, beaming brightly as I struggled to hold three enormous bouquets.
My handsome friend in the photo beside me was holding the lily bouquet I had shoved into his arms, smiling softly.
“Kwon Wookyung, you of all people shouldn’t have done this.”
With no one to hear me, the resentment I had kept hidden slipped out before I could stop it.
I thought that even if all the time in the world had passed, you would still come find me.
But in the two months of rehabilitation, not a single person outside my family had come to see me.
When I had learned to speak again, I had almost asked my parents, “By the way, where’s Kwon Wookyung?” — but for some reason I could never bring myself to say it, and two months had passed just like that. The strange thing was that none of my family had ever brought up that name first.
Before long, I arrived at a bitter conclusion. Maybe Kwon Wookyung had looked for me for a while after the accident. But then, little by little, worn down… he had eventually forgotten. Six years is a very long time. I didn’t want it confirmed by someone else’s words, so I kept my mouth shut as well. As though I had forgotten all about him too.
What is twenty-four-year-old Kwon Wookyung doing, and where? Well, he was a diligent guy — he was probably living hard and doing well.
I stopped myself right there and didn’t try to find out how he was doing. But whenever my family stepped away and I was alone, I found myself thinking of him. We had been childhood friends who spent every single day together for ten years — so of course his absence left a particular kind of emptiness.
And then, the reunion with the twenty-four-year-old Kwon Wookyung came about in a way I never could have imagined.
