#90
“……”
“Do you dislike me that much?”
Nam Seonwoo bit his lower lip hard before opening his mouth.
“Yes.”
Then, placing his hand over the hand on the doorknob, he said:
“It’s beyond dislike—I’m sick of you now.”
The fist that had stiffened at the sudden contact gradually relaxed under Seonwoo’s cold hand. When the hand that seemed like it would never move aside released the doorknob, Seonwoo opened the door without delay.
Even as he walked out the door, Seonwoo didn’t look back. He couldn’t. His vision was already blurred with tears that had welled up. Before letting go of the doorknob, Seonwoo paused briefly and quietly inhaled.
“Let me make one last request.”
“……”
“From now on, don’t concern yourself with me whether I collapse or not.”
With those final words, he let go of the door. Just as the entrance door was about to close behind him, Seonwoo articulated his last words clearly.
“I’m telling you to get out of my life.”
The door closed. Before the door lock even engaged, Seonwoo started moving. His legs, which had been walking quickly with large strides, soon began running with all their might.
The needles that had pricked his heart with each word he uttered now seemed to have pierced his heart completely. Otherwise, it wouldn’t hurt this much.
Tears obscured his vision, making the scenery appear blurry. Seonwoo roughly wiped his eyes with the back of his hand. Still, as tears welled up again and he was irritably wiping them away, he collided hard with someone.
“…!”
“Ah, oh…!”
He saw the much smaller figure about to fall from the impact of the collision. Quickly extending his hand, Seonwoo pulled the slender arm, and a fresh voice burst from within his arms.
“Eek, oh! Wow, I almost fell. Thank you!”
Seonwoo looked down at the youthful, spirited voice. The child in a school uniform looked to be only about middle school age. The moment his eyes met the girl’s as she looked up, Seonwoo froze.
“I’m sorry. I was looking at my phone…”
The student, who kept bowing, belatedly noticed her belongings scattered on the ground and clutched her head. The shopping bags she had been carrying in both hands were sprawled out, with their contents scattered everywhere.
“Oh no, what should I do? The bus is coming soon… Oh, Toto! Where’s Toto?”
Seonwoo slowly raised his head. Familiar bus numbers were written on the bus sign. It was that bus stop. The bus stop from his dream where an accident almost happened.
The child was sitting on the ground, picking up her things. Though he should have helped her, his body wouldn’t move, perhaps because his mind was numb. That’s when it happened.
“There it is!”
The child, who burst into a relieved laugh, jumped up. The elephant doll had fallen onto the road. While Seonwoo stood unable to even blink due to the eerie sense of déjà vu, the girl had already gone down to the road.
The small figure bending toward the doll flowed like slow motion. As a horn blared loud enough to tear his ears, Seonwoo’s body reacted first.
“Kyaaah!”
The girl’s scream was buried under the roar of the motorcycle. Seonwoo, who had thrown himself into the loud noise, pulled with all his might what his hands had grabbed toward the sidewalk. Done. When Seonwoo raised his eyes with relief, he could only freeze like stone.
An unfamiliar scene, different from his dream, was unfolding before his eyes.
Startled by the sharp scream, the motorcycle swerved its handlebars and charged toward the sidewalk. He could clearly see the face of the man on the motorcycle turning to panic. The approaching motorcycle also appeared slow like a movie cutting frame by frame, but he knew. That it was already too late to avoid. Seonwoo tightly embraced the body in his arms and squeezed his eyes shut.
At that moment, a sudden force pushed Seonwoo hard. As Seonwoo, pushed away, rolled on the ground about twice, he seemed to hear a chilling sound. In the wake of the roar that seemed to shake the world, an eerily quiet stillness filled the space.
The first sensation that reached him was the trembling in his arms. Seonwoo blankly looked at the child in his arms. The child, with disheveled hair, was crying, but somehow the sound couldn’t be heard. His gaze fell on his arms that were embracing the child. Only dust from the ground had soiled them—they were too intact to have been hit by a motorcycle. Moreover, since he hadn’t fainted, it seemed he hadn’t injured his head either.
He barely raised his stiff neck to look around. In the distance, he could see the motorcycle sprawled on the ground. The driver he had seen earlier was lying beside it, groaning, as if thrown from the vehicle. The motorcycle wheel spun in the air, emitting smoke. But the wheel was too dark red.
Strange.
Seonwoo slowly blinked. There were no traces of blood anywhere on his body. His head creakily turned, following the red track that was splattered abundantly. His gaze followed a beat slower, like someone sensing something ominous.
“…Ah.”
It was strange.
He couldn’t understand why Kang Jihan was there.
He couldn’t understand why the ground was dyed in such a frightening color, why Kang Jihan was lying on it, or why Jihan, who had always approached endlessly even when pushed away, was now lying so still.
Just like a dead person.
“Ah, ah…”
No matter how many times he closed and opened his eyes, the scene before him didn’t change. The ringing in his ears seemed to evaporate instantly. The people gathering around and the trembling movement in his arms all flew away as if bleached instantly, leaving only Kang Jihan.
His body shook wildly. With absolutely no strength in his body, Seonwoo crawled on the ground with both arms. He crawled toward Jihan. The blood soaking the clothes was so hot and wet that it was frightening. His trembling hands cupped Jihan’s face.
“Ji-Jihan…”
He thought he was seeing things. He wanted to believe that he had fainted again after hitting his head, and was dreaming again. But the sensation of the face beneath his hands was too vivid. His light brown eyes, which had been dazed, were filled with despair.
There was too much blood on the ground. It was terrifying how the elbow, the right wrist seemed slightly twisted. The leg was also strange. Blood was constantly flowing from the leg that seemed to have swollen greatly. The bleeding was too severe.
Seonwoo recklessly covered the area with both palms. The Seonwoo who had calmly administered first aid when Baek Heeyeon collapsed was not here now. He couldn’t judge what to do, how to do it, or where to start. He only had the desperate thought that he needed to stop the bleeding.
“What should… what should I do… uh…”
While muttering like a madman, Seonwoo couldn’t remove his hands from stopping the bleeding and kept shaking. His vision kept blurring because of tears, so he repeatedly took one hand off to wipe his face and then returned to stopping the bleeding. This caused his ghostly pale face and both hands to become completely covered in blood.
Then someone shook Seonwoo violently.
“Hey! Snap out of it!”
It was that student from earlier. The girl, who had been in panic until just now, was sitting in front of Seonwoo with clear eyes as if it had never happened. She moved the phone slightly away from her ear and spoke:
“They said the ambulance has been dispatched. Are you a guardian or family member?”
At the word in that urgent question, Seonwoo burst into tears again. Seemingly judging that normal communication was impossible, the student resumed her call.
“I don’t think there’s a guardian. What else did you say needs to be checked? Consciousness? Um…”
“He’s conscious!”
Seonwoo vacantly turned his head toward the sound. People had already surrounded Kang Jihan. Just then, someone pushed Seonwoo’s hands away and began compressing the bleeding area with a clean handkerchief.
“They say he’s conscious! Yes, his leg. We’re applying pressure. His belongings? Wallet or phone… Oh, there’s a phone!”
The student picked up the phone from the ground. The phone, the same model as Seonwoo’s, had both its front and back shattered into pieces. Seeing the damaged device, Seonwoo’s breathing quickened again, but he consciously tried to calm his breathing.
They said he was conscious. So he needed to gather himself.
Seonwoo reached out to the student. His outstretched hand was still trembling. After hesitantly handing over Jihan’s phone, she also passed along her own phone, which she had been using to talk to the paramedics.
Taking over the call, Seonwoo immediately spoke as a “guardian,” providing all the information required. He answered without any hesitation about Jihan’s age, allergies, medical history, and medications, but his voice was terribly shaky.
-The ambulance will arrive soon. Please don’t hang up and continue monitoring the patient’s condition. By the way, what is your relationship to the patient? Can you contact any family members?
“Ah…”
After uttering something that could have been despair or a sigh, Seonwoo couldn’t continue. From the other end came an urgent prompting.
-Hello? You said the patient’s phone is available, right? Could you try to contact someone?
Seonwoo looked down at Jihan’s phone. He knew there was no password. Jihan didn’t set passwords. But that wasn’t why he was hesitating.
‘His mother…’
In this life too, Jihan’s mother probably passed away the year he turned twenty. That meant there was no family to contact.
When his hesitant finger pressed the button, fortunately the phone screen turned on. But the moment he saw the photo filling the screen, Seonwoo’s finger froze in mid-air.
It was a man’s profile. The man wearing a coat over his school uniform had wrapped a scarf tightly up to his nose, making his face hard to see. But Seonwoo knew who this was. He had to know.
‘…What are you doing?’
‘Taking a picture of you.’
This was Nam Seonwoo himself, waiting for Kang Jihan on graduation day.
