#159
“Ki Baek-woo.”
The hospital room was quiet. Darkness cast over the sparsely patterned hospital room ceiling. It was night before they knew it. Lee Han-sol was lying sprawled on the low guardian bed when he suddenly called Ki Baek-woo.
“Yeah.”
The answer came back as if he had been waiting. Lee Han-sol blinked his unimpressed eyes and said.
“Sleep.”
At the firm tone, Ki Baek-woo fidgeted with his blanket for no reason.
“Mm-hmm.”
“I told you to sleep twice.”
“After I see hyung sleep…”
“Stop fucking around and sleep.”
“When hyung sleeps…”
When hyung sleeps, then I’ll sleep, wouldn’t that be okay? At his muttering tone trailing off, Lee Han-sol bolted upright. Whether startled by that momentum, Ki Baek-woo also sat up.
“Hyung, wh-why suddenly… is there something you need? Should I get it?”
In the darkness, poison had risen sharply in Lee Han-sol’s flickering eyes. He seemed unable to endure anymore. Ki Baek-woo kept stubbornly insisting on useless things. At his pretense of obedience, just answering “yes, yes” while slyly watching for reactions and persisting, Lee Han-sol’s patience was gradually hitting rock bottom. It was the limit of his broken anger management circuit that he was forcibly holding together. It had already been three days. Three days of Ki Baek-woo doing the same thing.
Lee Han-sol was annoyed by what Ki Baek-woo was doing, and annoyed by Ki Baek-woo himself. But among all that, the most ridiculous thing was himself enduring such an annoying Ki Baek-woo for three whole days. Even right now. If that thing kneeling obediently on the bed with downcast eyes, knowing he had done wrong, weren’t Ki Baek-woo. If it were Kim Jin-oh or Choi Tae-hyun, for example, three days? Lee Han-sol wouldn’t have endured even a single day and would have thrown a fit.
He would have rattled off baseless paranoid delusions with wild interpretations, ranting “Are you monitoring me under government orders right now?”, “Are you trying to kill me from overwork by not letting me sleep?”, “Don’t look at me, I’ll pluck your eyeballs out before you look down, you fucking bastard!” and rampaged until his anger was released. But it just had to be Ki Baek-woo.
‘Old habits coming out again.’
Lee Han-sol wanted to have an out-of-body experience if possible and beat himself up like beating a dog. Pathetic things need to be beaten to get better.
How can I be exactly the same as a person? Can a human really not change this much? I tried so hard all this time. Blockhead. Pushover. Idiot nerd pathetic moron bastard living your whole life groveling to Ki Baek-woo loser!
Lee Han-sol found himself ridiculous for showing mercy to Ki Baek-woo as if he had been waiting for exactly this to happen. After pouring out so many curses telling him to die, to suffer exactly as much as he had experienced. How many days has it been since acknowledging his feelings that he’s acting like this? Lee Han-sol couldn’t understand Lee Han-sol either. His foolishness was disgusting.
Lee Han-sol was ashamed of his softening attitude in front of Ki Baek-woo. He wanted to tear him down and corner him nonchalantly like he did to others. But he couldn’t. When Ki Baek-woo struggled pitifully like that, Lee Han-sol’s heart instantly weakened and became unable to get angry. As if his old habit of dying for Ki Baek-woo remained intact in his body, as if he had only been desperately enduring until now… He felt humiliated and degraded.
Twenty-five cycles. More than twenty years, Lee Han-sol had endured completely alone. Ki Baek-woo wasn’t by his side. So he had no choice but to think this way. Before the system operated, all the habits from the time when Ki Baek-woo and he were happy would have already disappeared. Getting upset as if the sky was falling over one small scratch on Ki Baek-woo, all tastes and actions revolving around Ki Baek-woo, wanting to do anything for him no matter how angry he got if Ki Baek-woo acted pitiful and whined. Such stale old habits couldn’t still remain, they would have all vanished like neglected food rotting away, Lee Han-sol thought quite naturally. He didn’t even doubt it. Because that would be too idiotic. Embarrassingly so.
But unfortunately, Lee Han-sol was an idiot.
When Ki Baek-woo stubbornly insisted on useless things while acting pitiful and disgusting, he still couldn’t overcome it. Just like now.
“Why are you really like this? Yesterday and the day before, you said you’d sleep when I sleep but you didn’t sleep. You kept your eyes wide open watching me sleep, what did you sleep? I told you I’m not going anywhere. If I was going to suddenly disappear somewhere, would I have come all the way here? Trust me a little!”
“I tr-trust you. Today I really will. I’ll really sleep when hyung sleeps… it’s not that I don’t trust you, I really just can’t fall asleep…”
“What do you mean you can’t fall asleep? You’re sleepy and your eyes are all droopy, pinching your thighs while doing that, and that’s because you can’t fall asleep? I told you, you have to eat well and sleep well to become human! You said you’d do that too, so why won’t you listen!”
Ki Baek-woo just lowered his eyes without saying anything. Fatigue was still thickly coating his eyelids that fell with his long eyelashes. Lee Han-sol felt like his insides would burst at that sight. He couldn’t understand why he was acting like that at all. Even after reuniting with him, Ki Baek-woo hadn’t improved even a little.
‘I didn’t expect him to get better overnight but… why is he really acting like that?’
Since Lee Han-sol had experience, he knew well enough that Ki Baek-woo, who looked like a patient, would need time to recover his strength. But he didn’t know his behavior itself wouldn’t change like this.
To be honest, Lee Han-sol thought that if nothing else, Ki Baek-woo’s eating and sleeping problems would be solved immediately. Because he was planning to be with him. It wasn’t groundless confidence. Even before Lee Han-sol fled to District B, Ki Baek-woo was already in a sufficiently bad state. Ki Baek-woo back then, not eating, not sleeping, trembling with anxiety like a dog that needed to shit. Even so, on days when Lee Han-sol seemed to be in a good mood or allowed him by his side, he would finally push a few spoonfuls of food into his mouth as if his appetite had returned, and he would sleep reasonably well. So Lee Han-sol thought casually that it would be the same this time.
And damn it.
As expected, nothing in this world went as he thought.
Now that Lee Han-sol had finally chosen Ki Baek-woo after a maddening internal conflict, Ki Baek-woo seemed to be getting worse rather than better. He still wouldn’t try to sleep, couldn’t eat well, and his anxiety symptoms had definitely gotten worse. To give an example of what happened the night before last:
On that day of their chaotic reunion, time inevitably passed and night came. Lee Han-sol somehow collected himself and separated Ki Baek-woo from his embrace. Ki Baek-woo urgently grabbed onto Lee Han-sol, but he muttered “You have to sleep” indifferently and came down from the bed. Then he laid patient Ki Baek-woo nicely on the bed, covered him well with a blanket, and pulled out the guardian bed he would use.
‘…Hyung, are you going to sleep there?’
‘Then where else would I sleep?’
Ki Baek-woo hesitantly moved his body to the side. Looking at him patting the space next to him, Lee Han-sol laughed without any feeling.
‘How can two people sleep there? Just sleep.’
‘Then I’ll sleep below, hyung sleep here. It’s uncomfortable.’
‘Stop talking nonsense and stay put where I laid you down.’
At those words, Ki Baek-woo started to sit up but then hesitantly lay back down. Thinking he was like a well-trained dog, Lee Han-sol slowly looked over Ki Baek-woo who was lying obediently and looking up only at him.
Thin cheeks, eyes completely red and swollen from the aftermath of tears and accumulated fatigue, lips that were still rough even though they had kissed like that. He looked so weakened that it was impossible to recall the healthy Ki Baek-woo from before this happened.
Could this be restored again? Lee Han-sol felt a bit overwhelmed by Ki Baek-woo who was too broken. But if he fed him well and made him sleep well, he’d return to being healthy Ki Baek-woo again, right? I also… got better after eating and sleeping well.
Lee Han-sol vaguely thought he could just imitate what Choi Tae-hyun had done for him. Since he wasn’t exactly normal either, he didn’t feel confident about taking care of Ki Baek-woo… but it was something that had to be done. He didn’t want to leave Ki Baek-woo in that state forever, and to end this world…
The final gate that would soon appear. To kill Jung Yi-dam there and destroy the system that was his real enemy to become free, Lee Han-sol needed Ki Baek-woo. He couldn’t do it alone. They always had to be two.
Author: Hyacinthus B
Hyacinthus
