#91
“So why are you taking pictures?”
“Because you’re pretty.”
Nam Seonwoo bit his lower lip hard as he felt the touch of hands brushing snow off the top of his head. Even biting down hard couldn’t stop his lips from trembling. Nam Seonwoo barely opened his mouth.
“Family is probably…”
That’s when it happened.
His phone vibrated in his hand, and a message window appeared over Nam Seonwoo’s photo. As he unconsciously read the text, Nam Seonwoo stopped breathing.
It was a short message. But his eyes, reading those few characters over and over again, soon filled with shock.
[Son^^ Are you home?]
Baek Heeyeon was alive.
* * *
“The surgery went well. The fracture in the lower leg has been stably fixed, and the bleeding is well controlled. There was a minor fracture around the elbow, but we’ve put a cast on it and will monitor it for a few weeks.”
The doctor pushed up his glasses and smiled. Though it was meant to be reassuring, Nam Seonwoo couldn’t contain the anger welling up inside him.
It had been the same at first. The doctor had joked that “it’s fortunate the thigh wasn’t injured,” but Nam Seonwoo couldn’t smile along at all. To tell a patient who had lost so much blood that they should consider themselves lucky seemed incredibly rude and irresponsible.
Meanwhile, Baek Heeyeon calmly nodded and asked, “So what will the progress be like going forward?”
“At least four weeks of rest will be needed, and the guardian should help ensure the leg isn’t used as much as possible.”
Baek Heeyeon bowed politely. But unlike her elegant gesture, Nam Seonwoo couldn’t maintain any semblance of composure. Seeing the doctor about to leave, Nam Seonwoo hastily spoke up.
“When can he start using his leg? There definitely won’t be any aftereffects, right? Like, is there any chance his gait might become unnatural, or that he might have permanent pain, or anything like that…”
“Oh my.”
As he blurted out jumbled questions mixed with concern and anxiety, the doctor let out a hearty laugh.
“You must be in shock from seeing your friend get hurt right beside you. Don’t worry. As I said, the surgery went well, and there don’t appear to be any special complications.”
“But…”
“If he focuses on recovery so the fracture heals properly, he can start rehabilitation right away. He’s such a young and healthy patient.”
“When can rehabilitation begin? Should physical therapy be done together? Shouldn’t we make reservations in advance—”
“Seonwoo.”
Nam Seonwoo closed his mouth at Baek Heeyeon’s voice.
“Don’t worry too much. If the doctor says it’s fine like that, it really is fine.”
She smiled while patting Nam Seonwoo’s pale hand. As if the roles of patient and guardian had been reversed, Nam Seonwoo hung his head weakly with his lips tightly shut.
A heavy silence filled the room after the doctor left. Nam Seonwoo looked at Kang Jihan lying in the hospital bed. Looking at the casts firmly wrapped around his right leg and arm made it hard to breathe, as if they were constricting his own neck and chest.
Kang Jihan, still under anesthesia, was sleeping peacefully. Even seeing his chest rise and fall regularly made Nam Seonwoo feel like he might burst into tears rather than feel relieved.
“Look at this kid. About to cry again. I didn’t take you for one, Seonwoo, but you’re a real crybaby, aren’t you?”
As if the heavy atmosphere had been just Nam Seonwoo’s imagination, Baek Heeyeon was smiling brightly. But again, Nam Seonwoo couldn’t smile along. It wasn’t just because of guilt and a sense of debt. Perhaps reading the confusion and questions in his eyes, Baek Heeyeon stood up.
“Shall we go for a short walk?”
“…”
“It seems like you have a lot to ask this auntie.”
Nam Seonwoo’s gaze fell on Baek Heeyeon’s necklace. After looking at the pendant that had lost its luster, he looked back at Kang Jihan once more, then silently rose to follow her.
The sun had already set. Perhaps because it was late, the corridor was quiet with no one passing by. Walking to the end of the corridor, Baek Heeyeon sat down first on a chair placed in a narrow gap.
Nam Seonwoo stood awkwardly with his head bowed. The accident felt entirely like his fault, so he couldn’t bring himself to look Baek Heeyeon in the eye. Even expressing the questions rising up to his throat felt shameless.
After observing him for a while, Baek Heeyeon finally spoke.
“So according to what should have happened, this auntie should be dead.”
It was a direct statement. At those words, as if she knew everything, Nam Seonwoo froze stiffly. Unable to say anything, he scrutinized Baek Heeyeon’s expression until she continued.
“You said this pendant looks faded, right? Both Jihan and you.”
Baek Heeyeon unfastened her necklace and placed it on her palm. To her eyes, the pendant was still shining.
“I thought it would only be once, regardless of who the owner was, but that doesn’t seem to be the case.”
Muttering that, Baek Heeyeon raised her head.
“You asked if you could go back to the past, right?”
“…”
“So, do you still think it ‘cannot be changed’?”
At the clear smile, Nam Seonwoo’s eyes wavered.
When he saw Baek Heeyeon, who had come after being contacted, actually alive and moving, Nam Seonwoo had stared at her in disbelief. Because her words had been lodged in him like sharp glass fragments.
‘No matter how strong an individual’s wish may be, in the end, humans are fragile beings before the cycle of fate.’
But her face, showing no signs of illness, actually looked healthier than it had two years ago.
“Why…”
Nam Seonwoo barely swallowed and moved his lips.
“You want to ask why this auntie is alive?”
Feeling as if his mind had been read, he closed his mouth. Baek Heeyeon patted the empty seat. She wanted him to sit beside her. Only after the hesitant Nam Seonwoo sat down did she begin her story.
“After talking with you, Seonwoo, I thought about it again. I kept talking about Jolie’s rule and whatnot, but in reality, I was the one most accepting of my illness, of my fate.”
The chronic disease she had suffered from had led her to live a life of small satisfactions. It was a short life, but precious because it was finite. That’s why Baek Heeyeon could calmly accept death that came too early. At least until she learned of her son’s choice.
“You said it before, didn’t you? That you had never wished to go back to the past.”
Since it was an object she had never used herself, she didn’t know the exact mechanism of how it worked. What she did know was just one thing: if you deliberately met death to go back to the past, you would lose your memories. This meant you would forget the reason for going back, which meant there was “no point in returning.”
And the son she saw didn’t seem like someone who had “returned.” Unlike her son’s friend.
“So I decided I had to live. This auntie already had an intuition about what choice you would make, Seonwoo. I don’t know how you two ended up at the end, but at least you didn’t want to reach that end again. So in the end…”
“…”
“You were going to leave Jihan.”
Having watched her son more closely than anyone else over the past year, Baek Heeyeon recalled that time and smiled bitterly.
Nam Seonwoo’s expression rapidly hardened. But since Baek Heeyeon wasn’t blaming him, she gently stroked his shoulders, heavy with guilt.
“Since then, I’ve been diligently going to treatment and rehabilitation without postponing it. I took a break from work for a while and started exercising. Because I had to live. I had to live to show you.”
“What…”
“That the result can be changed.”
Nam Seonwoo’s mouth fell open in bewilderment. For a moment, words she had once spoken flashed through his mind.
‘Things can change a little. If you make different choices than before, the results that follow will be different.’
But as she said, it was just “a little.” Baek Heeyeon had said that the big framework of fate was set, that a mere individual couldn’t change it.
Reading the confusion in his eyes, Baek Heeyeon smiled quietly.
“This auntie got very sick last year.”
Last year was when Baek Heeyeon should have died. Filled with inexplicable anxiety, Nam Seonwoo held his breath.
“I suddenly collapsed, and the doctors said I wouldn’t wake up. But I did. Because I chose to wake up.”
“…I don’t understand what you’re saying. I…”
“Of course, I might have just delayed the timing. Maybe the fate of ‘dying’ is still determined. But isn’t that the same for all humans?”
“…”
“The path I’ve chosen now is different from that ‘past’ you saw, so I don’t know what ending awaits at the end of this path. But at least it’s not repeating. Because I survived last year.”
Ending. It was a familiar word. Nam Seonwoo suddenly remembered where this sense of déjà vu came from.
‘Isn’t seeing the true ending of a story you haven’t seen before, in a way, ‘changing fate’?’
At that time, he thought it was just Baek Heeyeon saying comforting words. So he had let it pass. But at this moment, he felt like he vaguely understood the meaning of what she had been trying to say.
Noticing this, Baek Heeyeon repeated her words from that time.
“Do you remember when I said that the ending you saw might actually be a process, not the end?”
Last year, Baek Heeyeon had certainly been at death’s door. But she chose not to accept death, and as a result, she was alive like this.
This meant that meeting death might not have been the ending. The path to the threshold of death might be predetermined fate, but depending on what choice you make at that crossroads, you could meet a different ending.
