# Chapter 121
When I turned my head to the side, which didn’t move easily, I saw blurry afterimages scattered about. As I blinked, faces came into focus, and my mouth fell open.
“Ah… ahem.”
Dad, Mom. Those words I was about to say went back in. My voice was hoarse, and the sound wouldn’t come out properly. Maybe that was fortunate. I still felt awkward casually calling Yoon Taeho’s parents.
I slowly looked around. It was quite a spacious area to be called a hospital room. Judging by the TV and refrigerator in the corner, and the sofa large enough for many people to sit on, it seemed like a private room.
And even without looking in a mirror, I had a rough idea of what was going on. I had returned to being Yoon Taeho again. And in a pretty badly injured state too.
As I rolled my eyes, I noticed the bandages tightly wrapped around my right arm and left leg. I could still move, but it was difficult to use my full strength.
With complicated feelings, I gazed at the pure white ceiling and walls in the distance, but far from calming down, my head was throbbing. How long had it been since I was discharged, and here I was in the hospital again.
I sighed at this space that seemed like it should feel familiar by now but still felt strange. What the hell is going on? Just before this, I was definitely working at the hotel. I drank wine and collapsed from drowsiness, but…
It was strange that I collapsed after just a few sips of wine. It was clear that Jeon Seohan had done something to the wine. I should have noticed something was off when he asked for some time.
Could that be it? Could I have returned here because I drank alcohol? But there must be a reason I came back like this.
However, if I think that way, then on the first day I became Yoon Taeho, I didn’t drink alcohol, so that would be an incorrect assumption. And I didn’t wake up in a hospital at that time either.
I quietly thought through the events that had happened in chronological order. Starting from the first day I came here, to when I returned to my original world, and now waking up as Yoon Taeho again.
No matter how much I thought about it, I couldn’t find any common ground. Then I decided to try thinking from Yoon Taeho’s perspective. If the cause wasn’t with me, maybe it was with Yoon Taeho.
Then I remembered the shallow memories shown in my dreams, and my body twitched.
I had only become Yoon Taeho, without any of his memories remaining, so I couldn’t think from his perspective or empathize with him. I could only speculate about the things that the kid I could only try to understand might have gone through.
“…Maybe it’s because he committed suicide.”
Even for a neat person, it was strange that a male high school student’s room had so few possessions.
It seemed likely that the day I came here was indeed when Yoon Taeho gave up on himself. But that would mean his soul, which didn’t die, switched places with my body. Why does it keep changing back?
I need to know the reason to figure out how to return to my original world.
While deeply pondering, I had been still for so long that I shifted my body due to an uncomfortable sensation. My head turned slightly, and I made eye contact with Yoon Taeho’s parents.
Only then did I realize that while I was thinking, the two of them had been standing there the whole time. Their eyes, which were staring at me, were full of worry. Mixed in was also a look of shock, as if they’d received a terrible blow.
Yoon Taeho’s mother’s lips quivered. As if she wanted to say something to me but absolutely couldn’t.
I understood their concern, but as I wondered why they were like that, I recalled what I had just unconsciously muttered.
Ah, I had said the word “suicide” with my own mouth.
Feeling my mouth go dry, I quietly stayed still, not even thinking about reassuring them. Somehow I’d made them misunderstand, but it wasn’t exactly a lie either, so I found it difficult to know what to say.
After a while of dreadful silence in the hospital room, just when I thought I should say anything at all…
“…Was it… that hard for you?”
His mother, who spoke first, began to look increasingly pale. Although she was asking me, she couldn’t seem to look at me, her gaze directed downward, and her clasped hands were turning white.
“Ah-ahem, well… *cough* *cough*.”
As I tried to change the subject, I suddenly choked, making the atmosphere even worse.
“Drink some water.”
As my coughing wouldn’t stop, his father quickly poured water and handed it to me, helping raise my upper body that had been lying down.
“Ah, thank y—”
As he tilted my neck and brought the cup to my lips, my thanks trailed off. The lukewarm water going down my throat made my sore throat feel better. It even made my troubled feelings feel a bit better.
When I grabbed the cup with my uninjured left hand, his father, who had been holding it, pulled away.
As I looked at the remaining water swirling in the cup and tried to read the atmosphere, I heard a sigh from above. It seemed like a light exhale, but it sounded very loud because he was so close.
Not knowing whether it was a sigh of concern or the opposite, his father spoke in a gentle tone.
“How are you feeling? Are you alright?”
“…Yes.”
“…You’re not in pain or greatly uncomfortable?”
“It’s just a bit uncomfortable because it’s hard to move, but I’m not in much pain.”
At my answer, his father’s eyes widened in surprise. I raised an eyebrow as if to ask why he was reacting that way. Unable to continue speaking despite my questioning look, he stared at me blankly and then stepped back.
“…I’m sorry.”
It was a short but heavy apology.
When your son is lying in a hospital with bandages on one arm and one leg, worry and concern are understandable, but an apology might seem sudden. Still, if it was an apology stemming from guilt for making me this way, it wasn’t entirely wrong.
But it didn’t sound like it was just about my current situation in the hospital. It seemed more like an apology for everything that had happened until now.
I glanced at his mother standing behind his father. Both of them wore the same expression, sunk in deep thought.
I was about to say I was fine, but I stopped. I wasn’t Yoon Taeho, so it didn’t concern me much, and I could have tried to cheer them up, but I didn’t want to do that even with empty words.
Those words weren’t meant for me to hear. So I had no right to answer carelessly, nor any reason to interfere.
* * *
“If there’s anything else you’d like to eat, just say so.”
“This is already plenty.”
There were too many types of food to fit on the hospital bed tray, so we moved to a table in the corner, but even there, space was scarce.
They had brought so much food that it wasn’t much different from the amount they had brought for me to eat last time.
As I held my spoon, not knowing what to eat first, his mother put a piece of soy-braised beef on top. Although I could eat perfectly well with my left hand, I silently put it in my mouth and swallowed it.
I had thought this all along, but it was indeed delicious. Sometimes when I ate at home, I would think of the food I ate here and the environment. If there was something I missed a bit after returning to my original world, it was not being able to eat these side dishes anymore.
But now I was eating this rice again, and although it went down smoothly and tasted good, making me feel happy, I wasn’t sure if I should be happy about it.
“Taean said he’ll come after school, so tell him if you need anything.”
“Okay.”
Taking a sip from the soup bowl, a savory taste filled my mouth. It was perilla seed soup with plenty of dried radish greens.
Last night I didn’t have much appetite and only ate a little, so I was hungry, but now I realize it wasn’t that I didn’t have an appetite, but that the food itself wasn’t tasty. Even though this was the Imperial University Hospital and it wasn’t that bad, hospital food seems to taste the same in any world.
Or maybe his mother’s cooking was just different. Even though my soul was different, perhaps my body remembered, because everything went down well. Seeing me, his mother said in a plain tone:
“Eat slowly.”
Her tone suggested she was pleased to see me eating well but worried I might get indigestion. Her active attitude toward me, different from before, felt unfamiliar but not unpleasant.
“Have you… thought about it? If you want to transfer schools, we’ll prepare for it, so don’t worry and just tell us. Like your father said, studying abroad wouldn’t be bad either.”
After I heard the apology from his father when I returned here yesterday, we talked for quite a long time.
I learned something I hadn’t known before: Yoon Taeho had wanted to transfer schools during middle school. At that time, his parents naturally didn’t allow him to transfer without a reason, and that seemed to have created quite a rift.
That’s probably why they were so awkward with each other. After living like that for a while, I fell from the railing, and his parents received the news and were shocked at Yoon Taeho’s condition.
Since I had returned to my original world, I don’t know what happened afterward, but I was quite surprised when I heard that I had been in the operating room. Moreover, I realized that just as I continued my life after returning to reality, Yoon Taeho also woke up and lived here.
Thanks to them sharing that they had been frustrated because he wouldn’t say anything no matter what they said, I could roughly figure out what had been happening.
Honestly, since I was a seriously injured patient, I expected them to at least ask what I had been doing to fall from the railing, even if they couldn’t get angry, but the two of them expressed anger at other kids.
Specifically at Ye Abin and Son Gyucheon. I was surprised to hear these names after a long time, even before I could feel bad. I wondered how they knew it was because of those guys, but apparently, the school realized it wasn’t a simple accident and reported it, so the prosecution investigated the cause.
A school violence committee was properly convened, and the two identified as perpetrators were investigated, but when Yoon Taeho, who would be a witness, didn’t say a word, the trial was temporarily suspended.
During that investigation, his parents realized what had happened when Yoon Taeho was in middle school, were shocked, and apologized to me. That’s a summary of what had happened until now.
His mother bringing up the transfer first meant she was willing to do now what she couldn’t do then.
“…I’ll think about it a bit.”
“…Alright.”
A transfer. In the past, I would have immediately agreed, but now was the time to decide carefully. Somehow I had returned here, but shouldn’t I give this body back to Yoon Taeho?
After finishing the meal, we neatly put the leftovers in the refrigerator. His mother said she had something to do and would come again tomorrow, then left.
Since Yoon Taeho seemed intent on mistreating his own body and hadn’t done any rehabilitation training, I did it in his place, and when I returned to the room, someone was waiting.
