Still, if he wanted to survive, he at least had to swallow medicine with plain water. It was survival wisdom that came from long experience. Chaehun forced his eyes open and moved his body. However, his legs wobbled and he couldn’t stand up, collapsing back onto the sofa.
“At this rate, I’m going to collapse.”
Sighs kept pouring out. Everything was bothersome, but he forced his limbs to move, took water out of the refrigerator, and took medicine. He gave up on dinner.
After changing his clothes, he washed up roughly and lay down on the bed. Just as he thought sleep was slowly coming, his phone vibrated in his hand.
[Tomorrow. Wednesday. 8 o’clock.]
Checking the message, still in that short and irritating style, Chaehun frowned. The cold would be worse tomorrow. Even if he went to the hospital and got an injection, sex would be too much.
Because they had fought on Sunday, he didn’t want to give the impression that he was deliberately avoiding Seunggeon. Still, it couldn’t be helped.
Chaehun tried to send a message postponing the appointment because of his cold. But whether his head was foggy or his hands were shaking, he kept making typos. In the end, Chaehun pressed the call button.
The ringtone rang for quite a while before Seunggeon answered the phone. Fortunately.
—Kang Chaehun? What is it?
Seunggeon’s voice asking what it was about was quite low.
“Can you talk?”
—Yeah.
“Tomorrow, I mean. So, I caught a cold. It’s pretty bad. Not tomorrow, but the weekend. No, the weekend won’t work either. You might catch the cold. Let’s meet after I’m completely better.”
Chaehun explained as earnestly as possible. But Seunggeon’s answer was delayed. He wondered if he was suspicious. When they had met earlier, he had been relatively fine. Even now, his voice sounded fairly normal to his own ears.
“It’s true. I’m really not well.”
—It’s because you got caught in the rain.
“Probably. Cough. Cough.”
Chaehun was glad for the cough that finally came out. However, the coughing made his head ring severely.
—The hospital?
“Huh?”
—Did you go to the hospital?
“Uh… So, I had things to do and couldn’t go. I’ll go tomorrow. I have to go tomorrow.”
Chaehun realized half a beat late that he had repeated the same thing. Whether it was the medicine kicking in, his fogginess had gotten worse.
—Don’t try to tough it out. Go to the emergency room.
“It’s not that bad.”
Going to the emergency room for a cold was too much. He’d be fine since he took medicine. He wanted to add that, but he had no energy and the words didn’t continue.
—Did you take your temperature? How much is it?
“Temperature…”
Chaehun tried to answer that he hadn’t taken his temperature. But his eyes closed without him realizing it. The moment he felt his phone slipping from his hand, his consciousness cut off. So he couldn’t answer Seunggeon’s call from far away.
—Kang Chaehun?
* * *
“When he sweats a lot, it’s good to change his clothes. Have him drink water frequently, and even if he says he’s hot, don’t let him kick off the blanket.”
“I know that much myself.”
“Wouldn’t it be better if I just nursed him? You have a lot of schedules tomorrow too.”
“I said it’s fine. I’ll just see Chaehun wake up and then leave.”
Listening to Shim Jeongmin and Seunggeon’s conversation, Chaehun regained his flickering consciousness. Shim Jeongmin, who gave a brief greeting, reminded him until the last moment not to give cold things to a cold patient. Hearing the sound of the front door closing, Chaehun opened his eyes with difficulty.
When he blinked his eyes, blurry from fever, several times, he could see Seunggeon approaching the bed. When their eyes met, he asked as if surprised.
“You’re awake?”
“Choi… Seunggeon?”
“Your fever is severe, are you okay?”
Chaehun was bewildered. He was lying on the bed in his one-room apartment. But he couldn’t understand how Seunggeon was here.
He wondered if he was dreaming, but it felt somehow real.
“Why…? You?”
“Don’t you remember? During the call, you stopped saying anything. When I called back, you didn’t answer. I thought you might have collapsed badly.”
“The door?”
“I called the building manager and had it opened.”
“He’s a strict person though.”
“I said the call got cut off and asked him to open the door. Explaining took quite a while.”
Seunggeon answered his short questions well. His foggy head couldn’t organize things properly. Still, he did remember losing consciousness during the call. Seunggeon must have been worried about that.
As Chaehun was pondering what more to ask, an IV bag came into his view. The end of the tube connected to the bag hanging on the IV stand was inserted into his hand.
“Uh… This?”
“Glucose and various things.”
“You?”
“No. Director-nim. He has a medical license.”
“Wow…”
Chaehun was purely surprised. Shim Jeongmin was competent, but still, a doctor’s license was a completely different matter. Even if not a specialist, you had to study for six years in medical school and pass an exam. With just a license, you could even open a practice as a general practitioner.
“Why doesn’t he work at a hospital?”
“Ask him yourself.”
Seunggeon’s personality was consistent. He didn’t talk much about his own or others’ stories. Ten years ago, he hadn’t thought deeply about it, but it had been the same back then too.
Looking at it now, he wondered what he had known about the guy ten years ago. Preferences, way of speaking, things he liked, things he disliked. Good at both studying and sports, not talkative, serious yet stubborn.
The thoughts that came to mind haphazardly disturbed Chaehun’s mind. It became even more so as he kept looking at Seunggeon’s face.
It wasn’t particularly pleasant or comfortable.
“I’m fine now, so go back. Don’t you have a schedule tomorrow too?”
“I’ll organize the needle first. You could get hurt if done wrong.”
“That’ll take a while.”
“About an hour should do it.”
An hour was long. Chaehun tried to check the electronic clock on the nightstand to confirm the time, then gave up. His body wasn’t moving properly.
“What time is it now? Cough!”
The cough that suddenly burst out continued for a long time, and Chaehun couldn’t regain his composure. His chest ached and his throat stung. When he finally caught his breath, Seunggeon said it was 12 o’clock and handed him a water bottle. Chaehun, drinking water with trembling hands, closed his eyes at the dizziness.
“Sleep again.”
“Okay.”
As he closed his eyes, sleep naturally poured over him. Chaehun didn’t hold onto his fading consciousness. However, he couldn’t sleep deeply, repeatedly waking and falling asleep.
Chaehun didn’t like the ambiguous state of being between awake and asleep. His feverish head was foggy, his body was heavy as a thousand pounds, and his throat stung.
It had been really long since he’d been this severely sick with a cold. When he was in college, he had lived in a dormitory, and after getting a job and becoming independent, he had no time to be sick. It was the same when he was young.
Kang Yeonghwan, seven years younger than Chaehun, had been weak since birth. On the other hand, both Kang Suchan and Chaehun were healthy types. They normally got hurt and fell ill but easily shook it off and got back up.
Perhaps because of that, at some point he became unable to tell his parents, who were going back and forth to the hospital with hardship, that he was sick. When he caught a cold like an event once every few years, it was enough to take medicine and wake up after suffering through one night.
This was the first time someone was nursing him when he was sick like this.
Was it the first time?
Chaehun traced his flickering memories. He couldn’t know about when he was very young, but as far as he could remember, it was indeed the first time. So it was fascinating. It was the same with Seunggeon, who seemed to have never properly nursed anyone, doing it so capably, even wiping away his sweat.
As Chaehun continued various thoughts while dozing, at some point he noticed that Seunggeon was lightly touching the back of his hand. Specifically, it was the back and wrist of his left hand where the IV needle was inserted.
Chaehun opened his eyes with difficulty and looked at Seunggeon. Seunggeon, sitting on the floor beside the bed, was reading something on a tablet. And with his free hand, he was fiddling with Chaehun’s hand. It was a completely unconscious action.
As Chaehun was wondering why that guy was doing that, he thought of the wristwatch. He had handed over a card saying that checking the time on a phone didn’t look good, telling him to buy a wristwatch. When that fell through, he directly bought an expensive wristwatch and thrust it at him.
