Prologue
* * *
After the alumni guest lecture ended, Haneul barely managed to slip out of the lecture hall, which was packed with students cheering enthusiastically for Jaehyeok. As he made his way toward the campus back gate, he turned the events of the day over in his mind.
〈Meet me briefly at the café in front of the school’s back gate at 6 PM.〉
“Don’t tell me he’s going to ask for something like a victim testimony? No — if that were the case, the police would come themselves.”
No matter how he thought about it, he couldn’t come up with a single reason to meet Jaehyeok separately, and Haneul found himself muttering under his breath without realizing it. He shook his head vigorously and let out a deep sigh.
“Hah…… I should be picking up another shift right about now……”
Haneul thought of the surgery costs running into the tens of millions of won. Lost in a tangle of thoughts, he walked on — and before he knew it, he had arrived at the back gate.
The café across the three-way intersection had an open layout with an entire wall made of floor-to-ceiling glass. It was clean and newly opened, its exterior practically gleaming.
He crossed the intersection and approached the café, catching sight of Jaehyeok’s back as he sat facing away from the window.
“He’s already here.”
As if trying to calm his pounding heart, Haneul drew in a deep breath and carefully pushed open the café door. The soft jingle of the bell rang out, and Jaehyeok’s gaze naturally turned toward him.
“……Hello.”
Without a word, Jaehyeok gestured to the seat across from him as Haneul approached the table. Haneul sat down awkwardly in the indicated seat. He hadn’t done anything wrong, yet there he was, hands clasped together like an idiot — so he decided that the least he could do was hold his head up straight.
“What’s the reason you wanted to meet?”
Mustering his courage, Haneul looked at Jaehyeok and spoke. Jaehyeok leaned back comfortably against the soft sofa cushion and crossed his legs.
“I’ll get straight to the point.”
“……”
Those few words from Jaehyeok seemed to freeze the atmosphere solid. Under the weight of Jaehyeok’s overwhelming presence, Haneul shrank his shoulders as though he were some great criminal. But he quickly steeled himself, straightened his shoulders, and looked Jaehyeok directly in the eye.
“I need a child.”
Even to Jaehyeok himself, it was an absurdly outrageous proposition. He furrowed his brow, irritated for reasons he couldn’t quite name.
“……Excuse me?”
Caught completely off guard by Jaehyeok’s words, Haneul asked again a beat too late.
What is this guy saying?
Why is he telling me this?
Fortunately, Haneul only thought those things — he didn’t let them slip out of his mouth. But Jaehyeok gave him no time to even process the situation before dropping an even more staggering proposition.
“Let’s get married.”
1. Blue Cuckoo
* * *
“Here, take this.”
“Oh…… huh? Sure.”
Haneul stopped walking and stood there blankly, holding a flyer someone had shoved into his hands at the big intersection in front of the school. He turned toward whoever had given it to him — but that person had already vanished without a trace.
[L00king 4 Blue🔵Cuck00🐦
01O-123⃣4-🖐678
#QuickTransfer💰 #SafetyGuaranteed💯 #OneCallAway🆗]
Haneul’s brow furrowed slightly as he read the garbled text plastered all over the flyer.
“Blue Cuckoo? What on earth is this?”
Unable to just toss the torn-cornered flyer on the ground, he hesitated for a moment before crumpling it into his bag. Then he turned and headed back toward school.
Stepping onto the campus with its lush, deep-green trees, Haneul let out a heavy sigh as wave after wave of worry crashed over him.
“Hah……”
In an effort to manage the anxiety tightening around his throat, he paused on the steep incline leading up to the College of Education — the one everyone called Panting Hill — and looked up at the blue sky. The dazzling sunlight filtering through the thick canopy of trees shattered brilliantly against the corners of his eyes, which were just barely holding back tears.
Having barely managed to settle the worry churning in his chest, Haneul slapped both his cheeks with his palms and looked around. Exam season was nearly over now, and among the students who looked noticeably more relaxed, he felt a strange sense of disconnect he couldn’t quite name.
“I can’t give up — not me too.”
Thinking of his sick younger sister, Haneul climbed the steep Panting Hill with determined steps.
“The results of patient Yun Garam’s blood test and bone marrow examination have come in. Leukemia cells currently occupy more than 70% of the bone marrow, and it is anticipated that conventional chemotherapy regimens will have minimal effect.”
“Professor Kim…… does that mean Garam’s condition has worsened further?”
Haneul asked carefully, his trembling hands clasped tightly together. The doctor’s expression was grave as he gave a slow nod.
“At this point in time, allogeneic hematopoietic stem cell transplantation is the most reliable course of treatment.”
“What is that?”
“It is a procedure in which the patient’s bone marrow is completely eliminated through high-dose chemotherapy and total body irradiation, after which healthy hematopoietic stem cells from a donor are infused.”
“Ah…… I see.”
The doctor’s lengthy explanation continued after that. What worried Haneul most was how suddenly Garam’s condition had deteriorated — but when he ran headlong into the very real obstacle of money, the despair hit him far harder. Not only did he have to manage the enormous cost of the procedure itself, but he also had to bear the burden of a prolonged stay in a sterile room. His shoulders slumped without him even noticing.
“Yun Haneul!”
Haneul turned toward the voice calling his name — but first he turned away and scrubbed his face dry with his hands, then spun back around with a bright smile.
“Kim Jingyu, how did your linear algebra exam go?”
“As if it went well. What about you, Haneul?”
“Eh, so-so.”
“Yeah right, you totally aced it.”
“No, some of what I studied happened to come up. Just got lucky.”
“You topped the department at midterms too — insane!”
Even having done well on the exam, Haneul’s feelings were complicated. He had no choice but to maintain his scholarship — without it, he couldn’t stay in school.
“If you get the scholarship this semester, you’re treating us.”
“Huh? Oh…… sure.”
His friend, oblivious to everything, patted him on the shoulder. But Haneul kept his true feelings hidden and trudged along beside him.
Having lost both parents in an instant to a traffic accident, Haneul’s only remaining family was his younger sister. And not long ago, that one and only sibling had fallen gravely ill — diagnosed with leukemia.
Haneul had been devastated, but he couldn’t afford to fall apart. In order to get his sister the treatment she needed, there was nothing he hadn’t tried.
Others said Haneul was sacrificing far too much for his sister at such a young age. But Haneul saw it differently.
He believed that the very will to save his sister was what kept him standing strong. And so, even today, he was turning over in his mind how he might somehow scrape together the funds for her treatment.
Lost in those thoughts for a moment, the two of them — Haneul and Jingyu — had already arrived at the College of Education’s department room without realizing it.
“Ugh, who ordered delivery in the department room and didn’t clean up?”
“Right?”
While Jingyu grumbled in an irritated tone, Haneul went around and threw all the windows wide open.
“Haneul, ah…… what are we gonna do? Jeonghun said he’d give us the exam archive later.”
“Why? Where were you supposed to meet him?”
“Here, the department room.”
“Hmm…… Knowing how Jeonghun usually acts, he’d probably drag whoever made this mess back here to clean it up, or just tell us to do it ourselves.”
“We need to get that archive either way, so let’s clean it up ourselves ahead of time. Otherwise he’ll just nag us to death and leave without giving it to us.”
