“Hello.”
Wooyeon, who entered the supermarket, first scanned the displayed products. Since they had drunk in the morning, kimchi stew? But he’d fried all the kimchi in the morning, so there was no kimchi left. Then soybean paste stew? He didn’t have any soybean paste left at home either, so there were too many things to buy, including soybean paste. To make bean sprout soup, he’d have to pay more attention to the side dishes, and to make pollack stew, he’d have to buy pollack…
Wooyeon, who had been pondering, picked out soft tofu from the tofu section, put it in his basket, and bought some vegetables. Soft tofu stew should be fine. He felt like he should at least make rolled omelet, so he put in eggs, and just in case, he also put in a small pack of Vienna sausages. Should he have kimchi too?
Not knowing Jeonghan’s eating habits made Wooyeon worry. If it were a meal for himself alone, he definitely wouldn’t have bought it, but Wooyeon grabbed the 500-won kimchi just in case. Come to think of it, there was no rice at home at all… He decided to buy rice cheaply online, but for now, he also picked out two instant rice packs for Jeonghan and himself to eat.
And Wooyeon, who was heading to the checkout counter, turned back and put in one more instant rice pack. Thinking of how Jeonghan ate ramen, he might eat two bowls.
“What brings you to buy so much?”
“A friend is coming to my house today.”
When the store lady who always welcomed Wooyeon asked playfully, Wooyeon answered. Wooyeon’s face saying that was smiling, but looked a little lonely.
On the way back home, carrying the heavy plastic bag, the stray cats that had been wandering near Wooyeon’s house cried out toward Wooyeon. They were stray cats that Wooyeon occasionally gave water or food to. The one with the most affection and no reservations among them approached Wooyeon and rubbed its yellow fur against his leg.
“You can’t do this.”
With a tearful face, Wooyeon bent down and separated the stray cat from his body. If it kept doing this, it would be terrible if it got harmed by someone who disliked cats. The cat, perhaps thinking Wooyeon was playing, immediately stuck to Wooyeon’s leg again and cried.
“I said you can’t…”
Though he could occasionally give them food or water from afar, Wooyeon, who was immersed in part-time work every day, couldn’t take responsibility for the cats. Wooyeon was also worried that if they kept being so affectionate like this, the cats might not learn to be wary of people.
Wooyeon got up from his spot and ran away from the cat. Then the one on top of the wall also cried out toward Wooyeon. Wooyeon tried stomping his feet, but it didn’t seem to feel threatening to the cats, and eventually they approached Wooyeon affectionately again.
“Really, you can’t do this next time.”
Wooyeon, who let out a deep sigh, tore open the Vienna sausages from the plastic bag. Three or four cats cried out with meowing sounds under Wooyeon’s legs. Wooyeon didn’t know much about cats and only knew that it wasn’t good to make them accustomed to human food, but he still thought it was better than the cats starving.
When Wooyeon put down about half of the Vienna sausages on the ground, the cats rushed over and bit into the sausages. He had to save the other half for Jeonghan.
Wooyeon, who had been crouching in the alley watching until the cats finished eating the Vienna sausages, put the Vienna sausages back in the plastic bag and stood up when the cats left. Though he hadn’t bought much, a lot of time had already passed.
Was Jeonghan already awake? He worried that he must be very hungry.
Wooyeon passed through the gate and stepped down the cement stairs. And as he carefully put the key in his studio apartment door, it turned unusually easily. Did I leave without locking the door? Wooyeon tilted his head and opened the door.
Inside the opened door, the blankets were still sprawled out, filling the studio apartment floor.
Wooyeon took off his shoes and entered the studio apartment. It was because Jeonghan was nowhere to be seen. Thinking he might have gone to the bathroom, he opened the door, but the bathroom was also empty. Without a call or a note, Jeonghan had already left Wooyeon’s house. Wooyeon looked at his studio apartment with blank eyes.
It’s not a big deal. He might have been busy…
Wooyeon tried to comfort himself by thinking that way. However, he couldn’t help the sad feeling that washed over him. Was it nothing to Jeonghan? Or maybe he was regretting it. Maybe he wanted to pretend it never happened.
Wooyeon washed the instant rice container he had set out for recycling again and filled it with water. There was no way to soothe his empty heart. He shook out all the food items in the plastic bag and roughly shoved them into the refrigerator, then put the sausages left from feeding the cats earlier into the empty plastic bag.
Wooyeon, who put the plastic bag on his wrist, came out to the alley again with the instant rice container. Perhaps not having completely left yet, the cats gathered near Wooyeon again.
“I guess I’m being punished for not giving you all of it earlier.”
Wooyeon, who crouched in front of the cats, shook out all the remaining half of the sausages and set down the water beside them. Since he’d bought them for Jeonghan, it didn’t matter who ate them.
“Eat well.”
It was what he wanted to say to Jeonghan. Tears burst out pathetically, and Wooyeon hastily wiped his cheeks. The smile he forced was lonely.
* * *
In the afternoon, Wooyeon received a call from the hospital that his mother had woken up, so he postponed even his tutoring to the next day and visited the hospital. In his haste, he headed straight for the reception desk, and a nurse stood up, saying she would guide him.
Following the nurse and walking down the hospital corridor, soon a large crystal sculpture appeared along with an elevator. When the nurse held up the card attached to her name tag, the elevator button lit up. Whether it was an elevator that people didn’t use often, the elevator stopped at the floor where Wooyeon was without any wait.
As Wooyeon boarded the elevator following the nurse’s guidance, the elevator that quickly went up soon stopped on the 12th floor.
“Follow me.”
Only then did Wooyeon think that something might be wrong. He thought that since it was right after surgery, she might be in a separate treatment room like an intensive care unit rather than a general ward, but the more he walked, the more it seemed that wasn’t the case. The hallway was excessively quiet, wider compared to where the general wards were clustered, and here and there, things like art pieces were hung.
When Wooyeon was about to speak to the nurse in puzzlement, the nurse stopped walking.
“It’s this way.”
When the nurse pressed the bell in front of the door, not long after, the door opened from inside. When the nurse gestured as if to enter first, Wooyeon slowly stepped inside the door.
The room, which looked more like a hotel than a hospital room, was several times larger than Wooyeon’s house. Bright wallpaper and a large window with a view of the city landscape at a glance, a large, thin TV, a leather sofa that looked luxurious at a glance…
In the hospital room divided into two rooms, Wooyeon was scared stiff before feeling surprise. It was a VIP ward room.
“Oh my, student Wooyeon! Over here!”
A welcoming voice flowed out from the inner room where the bed was placed. It was the caregiver who had been in charge of his mother.
“What on earth happened, student Wooyeon?”
She glanced at the nurse and spoke quietly to Wooyeon. She knew Wooyeon’s circumstances well. Was such a hospital room even possible in Wooyeon’s current situation?
The answer was obvious. It must have been Jeonghan’s doing.
“Ah… it just ended up that way somehow.”
Right now, there was no other way to explain it.
Wooyeon couldn’t know Jeonghan’s sincerity or thoughts. Why did he disappear without saying anything at the moment when Wooyeon needed Jeonghan’s warmth, after showing such excessive kindness and affection beyond what was necessary?
This kind of warmth wasn’t what he had wanted. To Wooyeon, it was all just debt he had to repay.
“Somehow?”
“I think I need to see my mom first.”
“Oh my, look at me.”
When Wooyeon tried to enter the room, the nurse smiled brightly and told Wooyeon she would call the attending physician. Wooyeon, who nodded inadvertently, entered the room.
His mother was lying on a bed positioned below a large oil painting the size of Wooyeon’s studio apartment floor. Wooyeon approached in one stride, seeing his mother who had become haggard in just a few days.
“Are you okay?”
When his mother nodded, tears poured from Wooyeon’s eyes. Perhaps it was still hard for her to speak, as his mother shook her head slightly left and right, telling him not to cry. Wooyeon barely held back from screaming at his mother not to die. In this world, his mother was the only one Wooyeon could depend on. Perhaps because the tension from all this time was released, once the tears started, they didn’t know how to stop.
“Why is this child crying so much…”
His mother’s voice was completely hoarse. Wooyeon sat beside the bed and continued crying with his face buried in both hands. The fact that he was crying like this was probably not only because of her. Seeing his mother’s face, clearly showing her illness to anyone who looked, Wooyeon felt entirely guilty even for shedding tears and feeling heartache over something other than his mother. What was money anyway—he felt so sorry for being scared as soon as he saw the hospital room.
“So why are you sick, why did you get so sick?”
As Wooyeon shed tears while whining unreasonably, his mother’s hand slowly patted Wooyeon’s shoulder.
