The engine turned powerfully with a faint vibration.
Swoosh.
As the automatic locking system activated, all the doors locked. Jaeha began to back the car out while looking behind.
“Are you going to the hospital?”
“No. That pension we saw before.”
“The pension?”
“Director Oh or whatever. I saw before that they prepared it well.”
Kyungwoo, belatedly realizing the meaning, shouted.
“Hey! Are you crazy? What are you doing!”
“If I don’t bury you now, I’m going to end up floating in the sea off Incheon. I have no choice.”
“You crazy bastard! Not that pension! Go somewhere else instead!”
Was the pension a specialized torture site? Maybe that’s why he was talking such nonsense. No, what kind of nonsense couldn’t a fourth-generation chaebol who came to directly hit a sitting prosecutor just because he didn’t like him spout?
“You’re the one who made me do this, Jung Kyungwoo.”
Screeeeech. Screeeech.
A spine-chilling friction sound continued as the wheels rolled across the parking lot floor.
“You think you’ll be safe after this? Perfect crime is impossible.”
“You said you killed all the CCTVs. Looking at your outfit, there won’t even be a trace of where or how you came in. Today’s the day.”
“Seo Jaeha!”
Kyungwoo jumped up and down. Regardless, Jaeha backed the car out. Since his head was dizzy and the alcohol hadn’t worn off, he had to work hard not to cause a collision. He moved a few dozen centimeters and repeatedly came to sudden stops. Each time, Kyungwoo, who was shaken, writhed in pain.
“Okay! I got it!”
“What?”
“Once every two weeks.”
“Too late. It seems like it would be faster to just bury you.”
“You crazy… Stop it!”
He almost scratched the car next to him because he backed out wrong. Jaeha spat out a cheap curse and moved forward again, returning to the original position. The moment he was about to reverse again, a loud siren sound rang out from the distance.
“The ambulance is coming.”
Jaeha was the one who called it, but when the siren sound was heard, Kyungwoo sighed as if relieved.
“Can’t be helped. Once every two weeks. I’ll make the promise. You pick the place. Deal?”
“…Crazy bastard.”
“I’ll take that as you understood.”
With those words, Jaeha turned off the engine. As soon as he sighed, paramedics shouted.
“Is this the person who called 119?”
Before getting out of the car, Jaeha roughly untied the necktie binding Kyungwoo’s wrist.
“Be gentle! Aaah!”
“Don’t exaggerate. You won’t die from a broken finger.”
He rolled up the necktie and put it in the dashboard compartment. Then he got out of the car.
“Here. There’s someone inside too.”
“Hey! Over here!”
Paramedics swarmed in carrying emergency boxes and stretchers. Behind them followed an ambulance with the siren off but red lights still spinning.
“How did this happen? Did you drink? Were you driving?”
A paramedic asked quickly.
“No. I drank and came with a designated driver, but I dozed off in the car and when I got out to go up to my house, I slipped and hit the back of my head.”
“It looks like you got out from the driver’s seat.”
“I sat in the front seat to get tissues from the passenger side.”
Another medic supported Kyungwoo sitting in the back seat.
“What about this person?”
“That idiot got hurt by stupidly slamming the car door hard without knowing his own hand was caught in it, living up to how he looks.”
Kyungwoo, getting out of the back seat, glared at Jaeha when he heard that. But he didn’t deny it.
The paramedics treating them were silent. As if there were more than one or two people who drank and caused accidents, they seemed to completely accept the hastily improvised excuse. While doing so, they swept over both Jaeha and Kyungwoo with pathetic looks.
To crumple one’s dignity, to crumple it like this.
They got on the ambulance together and headed to the emergency room of a nearby university hospital. Sitting side by side with Kyungwoo in the shaking ambulance back seat. Throughout the ride, the paramedics busily communicated over the radio, and the two kept their mouths shut.
Weeeoooweee.
The siren rang noisily.
Jaeha got three stitches, and Kyungwoo got a splint after an X-ray. Unfortunately, it wasn’t broken, just slightly fractured.
After paying the emergency room treatment fee, he looked for Kyungwoo, but he had already disappeared.
*
As soon as Kyungwoo left the hospital, he immediately got on an airport limousine nearby. He had prepared the flight ticket to Seattle and passport in advance. It was a procedure he had set in advance when he decided to hit Seo Jaeha.
His swollen hand throbbed even more because of the low air pressure. Even eating painkillers like cereal, the pain didn’t easily subside.
His head kept pounding. He closed his eyes and listened to the aircraft engine noise. Even the first-class seat that supposedly provided the best comfort was nothing but a bed of thorns.
A flight attendant who had approached asked.
“Are you comfortable? Please let me know if you need anything.”
“Ice water, please.”
An irritated response automatically burst out. The flight attendant’s business smile stiffened slightly. The water came right away.
“Thank you. I have a headache.”
The flight attendant who had unnecessarily received irritation now realized it wasn’t a problem with the service and, relieved, asked with a worried expression again.
“Shall I prepare medicine for you?”
“I have it.”
He pointed to the small handbag beside him. The flight attendant, seeing Kyungwoo’s arm with a splint, perceptively asked, “Shall I help you?”
Kyungwoo took the medicine the flight attendant took out and handed the glass back to her.
“I’m going to sleep now… I’ll call if I need anything.”
At the euphemistic expression to not disturb him, the flight attendant adjusted the knee blanket covering Kyungwoo, then lowered the individual lighting and withdrew.
‘Damn it.’
Recently, even after taking sedatives, he would fall into a light sleep and then wake up startled for no reason.
He was used to it in his childhood. He was always a sensitive child lacking sleep, and nannies were frequently fired. Then, when he met a pediatric psychiatrist around the age of ten, he gradually found stability, and afterward, insomnia almost disappeared.
After coming to Korea, losing sleep at night was all due to stress from social factors rather than psychological factors.
But from some time ago, insomnia had slyly appeared like an unwelcome guest. At first, he couldn’t specify the cause. He simply diagnosed that stress from the Kim Gilsu matter had complexly contributed.
But that wasn’t all. The vague cause became clear some time ago.
Seo Jaeha.
That bastard. After meeting that guy, everything became a mess.
Calling him to the pension was the first big mistake. No, trusting the report that came up from below as is was itself a misstep.
A timid and cautious personality unlike his neat and manly appearance.
‘That crazy wild bastard?’
The flow of locking the door and unfastening his wristwatch to hold it was excessively natural. Rather than interrogating, being interrogated suited him better.
However, because of such accessories, the possibility that Jung Kyungwoo, heir of Taeryoung, would really fall into a big crisis was almost nil. The problem was the heart of Jung Taeho, Chairman of Taeryoung Group.
Just recalling the gaze of disapproval toward his only son made the back of his neck stiffen. The person most disappointed that Kyungrok was a noona and not a hyung was precisely Kyungwoo. If Kyungrok had been a hyung, Kyungwoo would have been scheming to waste his life by now as a fourth-generation chaebol born with a gold spoon.
Reality wasn’t easy for anyone. Even he, materially affluent, lived as if being chased. And then dog-like situations of being bitten by a mad dog also occurred.
‘Damn it.’
Swallowing curses, Kyungwoo forced himself to try to sleep.
After a ten-hour flight, he got off at Seattle Airport. Since he came alone without attendants, he didn’t contact the local branch office either. An airline employee helped retrieve his luggage.
The small city Kyungwoo aimed for was much further south from Seattle. Because he couldn’t drive due to his hand injury, he excluded cars as a means of transportation from the start. He also excluded limousines and Uber, which mostly had male drivers. All that remained was the train.
The railroad going down along the Pacific was entirely full of fog. While traveling a distance similar to the Seoul-Busan distance, the train stopped at every small station.
The train eventually stopped at Portland Union Station. After exiting the somewhat urine-smelling empty station, several Uber drivers stood in line holding small signs looking for people.
After scanning that scene once and looking around, the person who had been waiting over there shouted.
“Rob! Over here!”
A middle-aged woman wearing a red windbreaker waved her hands vigorously. The woman who approached with a pleased look immediately hugged Kyungwoo as soon as she saw him.
“Long time no see. How was the flight? No, what happened to your hand? You didn’t mention this in your email.”
“Joan, have you been well?”
Fluent English came out of Kyungwoo’s mouth.
“I’m always the same. Your luggage? Is this all?”
Joan tried to carry the small Boston bag he was holding carelessly.
“I can carry it. One arm is fine.”
“Really? The car is over there.”
She opened the trunk of a nondescript silver SUV and loaded the luggage. And when he got in the passenger seat, Joan, who had already settled in her seat, pulled the seatbelt for him and fastened it.
“I’ve been counting down the days until you came.”
“Chris is doing well?”
“Of course. Tonight’s a party. You don’t have plans, right?”
“What would I have to do here besides go to Joan’s party?”
“Good. Look forward to my cooking. This time it’s a Mediterranean-style feast.”
“…You have stomach medicine, right?”
“Hahaha. I’ll prescribe you a strong one.”
Joan laughed and started the car.
Joan Park. A second-generation American immigrant around his mother’s age, the person Kyungwoo could trust most.
At first she was a babysitter with a medical school background who looked after Kyungwoo, but later she continued their connection as a pediatric psychiatrist. If not for her, Kyungwoo wouldn’t have been able to overcome his trauma.
They slowly passed through the downtown that was always dampened.
“Traffic has gotten bad lately.”
“Don’t whine about this much.”
“Korea is worse?”
“You can’t understand that anger unless you’ve experienced taking an hour to go a 5-minute distance.”
“Can’t even dream of returning home then.”
“You said this is home?”
“My spiritual home.”
“This is my spiritual home. We’re opposites.”
Joan smiled at Kyungwoo’s words.
“Come settle down anytime. Rob is always welcome.”
“I really want to.”
He answered with a sigh. Joan just showed a warm smile without saying anything particular.
“I want to live only as Rob, but it’s not easy.”
“Can’t be helped. Bloodline is so powerful it doesn’t let me go until I die.”
Because it was Joan saying this, who knew Kyungwoo’s circumstances all too well as a psychiatrist, it sounded even more powerful.
