When the two stopped talking, silence descended. Darkness covered them like a blanket as they lay tangled and sprawled on the cold rooftop floor. Night inevitably arrived and the air was quite bleak.
Sewan, who had been lying on top of Sagyeong with his eyes closed for a moment, rolled his body and moved to the floor. Like Sagyeong, he lay spread-eagled and looked up at the distant night sky, blinking. Then he stared at his profile, gazing straight ahead, deeply absorbed in some thought.
<I’ll come to you. Please wait for me.>
Sewan carefully spoke up, gathering his courage. Perhaps because he had been continuing to listen to the other’s breathing, Sagyeong burst into a chuckle. However, there was no answer. He might have brushed it off as just something a child was saying after being frustrated in his tantrum, or perhaps he thought about it seriously but didn’t rate the feasibility very highly.
However, in Sewan’s hollow eyes staring at Sagyeong, clear vitality had welled up.
A reason to live. Perhaps he had found it right then, in a very close place.
Even if the end wasn’t a standardized happy ending.
<Kim Sagyeong…… even your name is pretty, hyung.>
Still, no answer came back from him.
—
**01.**
On a wide lawn in a park near the Seoul branch of the National Forensic Service, a large horizontally long performance stage had been set up. Various orchestral instruments were lined up on the stage. The people handling them generally looked to be in high spirits. Above these performers’ heads hung a banner with the following words written on it:
<NFS New Year Concert Created with Bereaved Families>
<Hosted by National Forensic Service, Sponsored by Ministry of the Interior and Safety>
Despite the chilly January weather, the expressions of the people who had taken seats in the outdoor concert hall were bright without exception.
The people invited today were quite wide-ranging. Not only high-ranking officials such as the NFS Director, the directors of each affiliated university hospital, and the Minister and Vice Minister of the Ministry of the Interior and Safety, but also frontline police and prosecution employees who ran around on foot to solve cases had filled the guest seats.
Not only that, but including the main institute, researchers from regional branch offices and medical examiner offices at NFS-affiliated universities, as well as families of victims involved in various cases—the number of participants alone exceeded 300 by the organizers’ estimates. If you added the number of staff running this event, it would increase much more.
Thanks to this, Sagyeong’s seat, a researcher at the Korea University Hospital Medical Examiner’s Office, was in the very back row.
Sagyeong, dressed in an ivory sweater under a warm-toned gray coat, had a neat and tidy impression like his attire, giving off a static atmosphere.
He fidgeted with the disposable name tag issued for entry. On it, his name and position were stamped in block letters: ‘Researcher Kim Sagyeong.’
As he put down the name tag and scanned the order of pieces listed in the pamphlet one by one, at some point the melody of an orchestral arrangement of the famous OST “My Favorite Things” from the movie “The Sound of Music” pierced his ears like a subtle fragrance.
‘Oh, this music…… ‘
This was something Sagyeong usually liked too. It was always pleasant when other people gladly accepted something you preferred. Sagyeong cast a warm gaze at the bereaved families performing and the guests conversing in low voices while listening. Then his eyes casually reached the very front row.
In the highest seats sat the NFS Director, whom he had seen a few times at seminars, the Minister of the Interior and Safety, and the Director of Korea University Hospital, among others. It was a bit far, but since he wasn’t without discernment, he recognized them easily enough.
But at the end of this line, he was a bit puzzled by a young man of a markedly different age range from them. The man had a quite slender build, but his shoulders were broad so the chair’s backrest was far from sufficient. His neat-looking back in a suit seemed to be explaining something to the middle-aged men in the seats beside him.
‘Is he a district assemblyman? He feels too young for that. Maybe an actor who’s a PR ambassador for the Ministry of the Interior and Safety.’
As he looked more exploringly out of curiosity, he was able to catch the moment when the man slightly turned his head to the left. And the moment he witnessed that sharply defined profile, Sagyeong’s limbs stiffened a bit.
The face looked familiar.
Although he had only seen the side so far, it wasn’t easy to forget such a splendid handsome man. It seemed like the beautiful man whose beauty Shakespeare had praised unstintingly in poems across several sonnets would look exactly like that.
The attitude that seemed oddly skilled at handling adults, even the mouth that smiled gracefully, was particularly familiar to him.
As he kept glancing over, he realized that although the man had a smile on his lips, his eyes subtly weren’t smiling. Perhaps because of the harmony between his white skin and jet-black hair, his impression looked very cold. A subtle sense of pressure that would make one tense even if the other person did nothing if you stood near him could be felt all the way here.
‘Where did I see him?’
Sagyeong’s gaze, which had been rolling his eyes and following the man’s appearance, suddenly stopped in one place. It was because the man had completely turned his head to answer someone’s question from behind. The distance was far, but Sagyeong clearly took in his face.
At that moment, the precarious eyes of a young child who had tried hard to appear composed long ago in front of him seemed to overlap on the confident man’s face. His features closely resembled ‘that child.’
‘That kid’s name was…… what was it?’
Sagyeong, who had hastily begun to search through fragments of memory, barely pulled the child’s calm voice from his mind and suddenly flinched.
<Hyung, my name is Gi Sewan.>
‘Gi Sewan?’
Now that he thought about it, he closely resembled Sewan, whom he had seen a few times when he was young. If he became an adult, he would look exactly like this type of perfectly formed handsome man.
‘Could it really be that kid?’
After that day, when Sewan had come to the library where he was and had made up his mind to die, Sagyeong had never seen the child.
He didn’t know how a child just barely over ten years old, still so young, had learned about the affair between their parents, or how he could have figured out that Sagyeong was the son of his mother’s affair partner. One day, Sewan had suddenly come to the library where he was doing volunteer work and intuitively introduced himself as the son of Professor Im Seongryeong, and had appeared occasionally after that.
During those few meetings, the child didn’t particularly do anything. When he organized books in the library archive or read books, the child would observe that appearance in detail as if looking through a microscope and then leave. Although he sometimes sent questioning looks, he never expressed that in words. Sewan seemed uncommonly prudent and delicate for a young child, and also seemed to have many things to think about.
After that day, Sagyeong occasionally thought of Sewan. He somehow wanted to keep his promise with the child. However, he didn’t try to keep his word about checking to see if he was doing well when he became an adult. After all, the fact that they were each the sons of the people who had ruined each other’s families was an indelible cross to bear.
‘Maybe he can’t remember me…… ‘
While he felt it would rather be fortunate if that were the case, on the other hand, he didn’t know what kind of feeling it was to feel disappointment. Sagyeong, who had swallowed a bitter breath, deliberately lowered his head. Then, unable to overcome his momentary curiosity and raising his head again, the man had completely turned his back to him.
Just as Sagyeong, biting his lips, tilted his face more to the left to confirm his identity, Researcher Park Mintae in the seat next to him poked his side.
“What are you doing, Mr. Kim?”
“Ah, that’s…… it’s nothing.”
“It’s not nothing though? What are you looking at?”
“Really, it’s nothing.”
Researcher Park, who had been quietly staring at Sagyeong’s face with a suspicious gaze, casually continued.
“That’s right, Mr. Kim. I heard a new medical examiner is coming to our branch office this time.”
“Oh, really? They must be from Korea University Hospital, right?”
“You know, they said there was exactly one medical student in the Korea University Department of Forensic Medicine. The person who kept the line of Korea University medical examiners from breaking. The hospital staff all knew about that person. They were already working as a pathology resident at Korea University Hospital. Only we didn’t know the situation because we’re in a building separated from the main building.”
Sagyeong had also heard rumors through the grapevine long ago.
Forensic medicine was a major that was especially avoided even within medical schools. The career path was also bleak compared to general clinical doctors, and the medical examiner’s salary was a civil servant’s wage, so it was only about half the doctor’s average. Moreover, unlike doctors who save people, it was a profession that dealt with dead corpses, so social respect was also lacking. On top of that, the domestic autopsy field was originally poor in manpower, so the work was plentiful and arduous.
In this situation, it was a natural course for medical students who wanted to become medical examiners to decrease. He had even heard that even professors tended to dissuade students who said they were majoring in forensic medicine. In the midst of this, he knew there was a student who had steadfastly continued the legacy at Korea University. He always thought it was something to be grateful for.
“So that person is coming to our research institute? Can they come? I heard they were still a student even when I joined a few years ago. Did they finish their internship and anatomical pathology in between?”
When Sagyeong asked in a somewhat excited tone as if surprised, Mintae, who had been humming along to the music flowing in like background music, nodded lightly.
“I guess so. They graduated early from science high school too…… They must be quite young. Well, anyway, the director personally selected them as a special recruit.”
“If the director picked them, why aren’t they going to the main office but coming to our side?”
“It could be that since they’re a bit young, they’re being told to train on this side first, or it could be to supplement manpower since our research institute is one of the busiest in the country. Who knows what the director’s thinking? But you know what? The important thing is, their face is really amazing. They’re talented in many ways.”
