Jeonghan, who separated his lips, showered short kisses on Wooyeon’s mouth, cheeks, and temples. At the kisses that seemed like ones for a lover, Wooyeon instead felt tears come. After giving one last short kiss to Wooyeon’s swollen lips and pulling away, Jeonghan whispered.
“You shouldn’t have appeared in front of me, Lee Yooha.”
At his heart sinking once again with a thud, Wooyeon looked at Jeonghan while leaning against the wall. Tears flowed again over his wet cheeks.
Jeonghan had known all along. Who he was from the beginning…
“You knew?”
“I wonder.”
“Since when did you know?”
“You should think about that, sunbae.”
“You knew… Was it fun playing around with me while pretending not to know?”
“You’re the same, not saying anything either.”
Jeonghan smiled gently and reached out his hand. When Wooyeon flinched reflexively, Jeonghan caressed Wooyeon’s hair with a satisfied face.
“You were desperately pretending not to know with such an obvious face… I just played along.”
“…”
“How could I forget such a pretty face like sunbae’s?”
As Jeonghan watched the wet eyelashes tremble and smiled while wiping Wooyeon’s eyes, Wooyeon raised his strengthless hand and swatted away Jeonghan’s hand. Wooyeon couldn’t bear it because his heart, which felt like it had been hacked to pieces, hurt so much.
“You’re really a son of a bitch. You know that?”
The voice soaked in tears rang out painfully under the streetlight.
“I know.”
Jeonghan answered with a smile.
9.
“I’m sorry. Since everything has already been paid, we can’t change it for you.”
The hospital staff told Wooyeon with a troubled face. It was a request he had already made several times over the phone, and even confronting them in person was the same. It was obvious without asking that such a level of hospital room and surgery performed by the vice director couldn’t be included in the scope of welfare services.
“No, what I mean is… we can’t continue to use that hospital room with our circumstances.”
“That’s what I’m saying, guardian. The surgery fee and subsequent treatment costs, hospitalization fees for the next year, and even the unpaid balance you haven’t been able to pay until now have all been paid in full.”
“How can hospitalization fees or treatment costs be paid in advance…”
“It was the hospital director’s instruction. We don’t know the details either, I’m sorry.”
So that meant they had to stay in that hospital room for at least a year. It was definitely an astronomically absurd amount.
Wooyeon left his seat with a pale face, covering his mouth. How on earth would he repay that money? Perhaps it was an even larger sum than all the debts he’d accumulated until now. At the overwhelming fear, Wooyeon’s body trembled.
Wooyeon, who got on the VIP ward elevator, staggered and leaned against the wall. The elevator that went up quickly soon stopped and spat Wooyeon out.
Without knowing how he walked, Wooyeon was suddenly standing in front of his mother’s new hospital room. When Wooyeon pressed the bell, his mother’s excited voice came from inside.
“It’s open!”
When Wooyeon grabbed and lowered the door handle, the heavy door opened with a click. Laughter came from inside the bedroom of the opened hospital room, and Wooyeon froze with an inexplicably strange sensation.
“…Well, that’s what happened, right?”
As he approached closer to the bedroom, his mother’s laughter grew louder. Wooyeon stopped outside the bedroom and looked inside without entering. The gazes of those inside the bedroom fixed on Wooyeon.
“Hey, Yooha. What are you doing not coming in?”
Had there been a time in the past few years when his mother had smiled so brightly? Wooyeon briefly thought that. Wooyeon’s gaze naturally shifted from his mother to the man beside her.
“Hyung, you’re here?”
It was Jeonghan. The very one who had told him to sleep together sometimes just the other dawn and even forcibly kissed him. How shameless he was, even after being called a son of a bitch.
Jeonghan, as always, had a good-natured face and was smiling affectionately beside his mother. Even using the title “hyung” that he had never permitted.
“Why didn’t you tell mom you met Jeonghan?”
“At first, we didn’t recognize each other well either.”
Jeonghan patted his mother’s hand and answered on Wooyeon’s behalf. You lie so well without batting an eye. Wooyeon had nothing to say.
“Still, you should have told mom after you figured it out!”
His mother scolded Wooyeon with a smile. His mother looked in a good mood for the first time in a long while, and Wooyeon couldn’t blame her when she was sick.
“Yooha is a bit, not very smooth. Right?”
Perhaps conscious of Jeonghan’s presence, his mother kept calling Wooyeon “Yooha.” Jeonghan looked at Wooyeon with a smiling face without answering, then stood up from his seat. Wooyeon also kept his gaze fixed on Jeonghan without a word.
“Mother, I’ll go make a phone call.”
“Okay.”
As Jeonghan came out of the bedroom and faced Wooyeon who was standing by the door, he laughed lowly and patted Wooyeon’s shoulder. Wooyeon could only remain still as if frozen. When he heard the hospital room door closing behind him, only then did Wooyeon approach closer to his mother’s bed.
“When did Kwon Jeonghan come?”
“When? He came a little while before you did. You’re in the same department as Jeonghan, right?”
His mother had a welcoming face as if she’d met her son’s old friend. Only Wooyeon was anxious.
“Mom, how can you be so calm?”
“About what?”
“When we left that house… when we ran away. Don’t you remember how we came out?”
She tilted her head slightly as if she didn’t remember well. Wooyeon still vividly remembered his mother’s young figure stuffing the jewelry from that house into her pockets, but it seemed his mother herself didn’t remember well.
“Oh my. Hey! When was that? That’s not even money to Jeonghan’s family. Have you been worrying about that all this time?”
Just because they sold it cheaply in their haste to sell it didn’t mean the jewelry from that house was cheap. Wooyeon turned his head and sighed.
“Mom, I’m sorry but we can’t stay in this hospital room anymore. I’m going to move us.”
“Why move?”
She looked at Wooyeon with wide eyes. Her face said she didn’t understand.
“Jeonghan said it’s okay to keep staying here.”
“Mom! Why would Kwon Jeonghan pay for your hospitalization fees? You know it doesn’t match our circumstances.”
Whatever the administrative office said, he had to move, Wooyeon thought. He hadn’t expected Jeonghan to meet his mother so directly like this.
“Yooha, no, Wooyeon. Did you forget how mom treated Jeonghan before? Mom treated Jeonghan really well.”
“Was there anyone in that house who didn’t treat Kwon Jeonghan well?”
Since she was sick, his mother only increased in useless stubbornness and whining. Wooyeon held his forehead and turned his head. It seemed like it would take a long time to persuade his mother.
“Anyway, I’m moving the hospital room, so know that.”
“You’re leaving?”
“I have a part-time job.”
Wooyeon sighed as he left the bedroom, and at that moment, he ran right into Jeonghan who was coming back into the hospital room. At their meeting gazes, Jeonghan smiled at Wooyeon again.
“Talk to me for a bit.”
Wooyeon grabbed Jeonghan’s sleeve and went outside the hospital room. There were no particular words from Jeonghan who obediently followed him out.
The hospital room door closed behind them, and Wooyeon looked around wondering where they should talk. There was a guardian lounge not far away, and Wooyeon dragged Jeonghan there.
“Fortunately, you seem to have something to say?”
Fortunately, there were no other people inside the lounge. When Wooyeon closed the door and looked at Jeonghan, Jeonghan smiled broadly.
“I’m moving the hospital room.”
It was a notification. It was also the maximum resistance Wooyeon could manage at present.
“Why?”
“Are you asking because you don’t know?”
“Yes.”
Jeonghan looked down at Wooyeon with an expression that really didn’t understand.
“I never wanted such a luxurious hospital room. And of course I don’t have money to handle that.”
“But your mother seemed to really like it.”
He was at a loss for words. When Wooyeon looked at Jeonghan with an absurd expression, Jeonghan smiled gently and approached closer to Wooyeon. Having vigorously dragged him to the lounge, Wooyeon took steps backward.
“I never asked you for hospitalization fees in the first place!”
Unlike his vigorous voice, his face was pale. With the wall he bumped into behind him, Wooyeon stopped moving and looked up at Jeonghan.
“I’m paying the surgery fees anyway, so why can’t I pay the hospitalization fees too?”
Jeonghan, who approached close, said while fiddling with Wooyeon’s hair.
“I like this expression of yours, sunbae.”
Jeonghan whispered as he bent his head toward Wooyeon.
“Don’t.”
At the face that approached as if to kiss, Wooyeon turned his head. A laugh leaked out between Jeonghan’s lips with a snicker. Jeonghan grabbed Wooyeon’s chin and made him turn his head back. It was a gentle touch that wasn’t painful or forceful.
At their meeting gazes again, Jeonghan smiled and approached a little closer. It was a distance where their lips seemed about to touch at any moment. This time, Wooyeon pushed Jeonghan’s shoulder away.
“Don’t do that, please…”
