“…I was trying to pick up the treasure hunt slip I dropped near the slope, and the ground suddenly collapsed. Bae Jung-yoon got caught in the accident while trying to grab me.”
As he recounted what happened, his voice gradually grew quieter. Jo Seong-il, who had been listening silently, also looked somber. After a moment of hesitation, he finally spoke.
“I’m sorry.”
Go Hoon found Seong-il’s sudden apology puzzling.
“For what?”
“I’m the one who talked you two into coming on the MT. It feels like the accident happened because of me.”
Seeing Seong-il shrink into himself like a guilty man confessing a crime, Go Hoon couldn’t help but let out a faint, involuntary laugh.
“Don’t be ridiculous. How is this your fault? In the end, it was me and Bae Jung-yoon who decided to go.”
“Still, if I hadn’t asked you guys to come along in the first place… No, if I’d just kept my mouth shut and not asked you to help out with the staff stuff that day…”
Seong-il trailed off, then let out a heavy sigh.
“It’s a relief, at least, that you woke up okay…”
He looked so weighed down that Go Hoon didn’t know how else to comfort him. He was just as worried about Bae Jung-yoon. Honestly, wasn’t he at least partially responsible for Jung-yoon coming to the MT in the first place?
“Hey… aren’t we seriously cursed or something?”
When Seong-il started in on his usual “three years of bad luck” talk again, Go Hoon let out a faint chuckle. But it barely lasted a second before fading.
His gaze dropped, and his hands came into view. After clawing his way up a tree bare-handed and scrambling on the dirt, his palms and knuckles were scraped and torn. One of his fingernails had even cracked.
He’d fought desperately to save him. And yet, the weight pressing down on his shoulders hadn’t budged. Still, Go Hoon refused to give in to negativity.
“Bae Jung-yoon will wake up soon. No complications.”
He muttered this to himself as he clenched his fist with quiet resolve. Somehow, Seong-il caught that and responded with a tone a little brighter than before.
“…Yeah. He will, right?”
Meeting his eyes, Go Hoon gave a small nod.
Yeah. Bae Jung-yoon would wake up soon. He’d get up, brush himself off like nothing happened, and casually call his name like always—completely unfazed. That’s what Go Hoon chose to believe.
***
“Just a minute. That’s all I’m asking.”
“I already told you—no.”
“I’m not trying to do anything. I just want to see his face for a second.”
“And I already told you. That’s not allowed.”
Dressed in a patient gown, Go Hoon was currently arguing with a man in a suit outside Bae Jung-yoon’s hospital room.
A whole day had passed, and still, there was no word that Jung-yoon had regained consciousness. He couldn’t take it anymore and came all the way here. He knew full well that Jung-yoon had gotten hurt trying to save him—how could he just sit on his hands?
He explained that he was the friend who had been in the accident with Jung-yoon, and that he only wanted to check on his condition briefly. But the men with intimidating faces kept repeating the same line: he wasn’t allowed in.
But Go Hoon wasn’t the type to back down so easily. Pretending to give up, he waited for a moment when their guard dropped and made a break for it. Naturally, he was immediately seized by the two hulking men on either side.
“Okay, okay! I’ll walk out on my own.”
In the end, Go Hoon was forcibly escorted out of the VIP wing, looking like a belligerent drunk being hauled off by the police. It was humiliating.
Wasn’t this a bit much? All he wanted was to check on Bae Jung-yoon’s condition. They were acting like the guy inside was some corrupt politician surrounded by enemies. Or like he was an armed terrorist or something.
His chest felt heavy. Just seeing Jung-yoon’s face once would’ve eased his mind, but being denied even that only made his anxiety worse. What if something was seriously wrong?
Go Hoon trudged back to the shared four-person hospital room with his name on it. As he curled up on the bed, Jo Seong-il returned, having gone to the dorm to grab his things.
“Don’t lie there like someone who’s hit rock bottom. Get changed—you’re getting discharged.”
He dropped the duffel bag and urged him along.
Since Go Hoon wasn’t seriously injured, he was discharged after just one day. What surprised him was that the school had agreed to cover his hospital bill after hearing about the accident. The department chair had visited early that morning and delivered the news.
Is this how schools usually handle things when students get hurt during MTs? He’d expected them to pass the buck like always, playing the blame game—but this was unexpected.
Then again, maybe it was the school’s way of doing damage control. If word of the accident got out online, it would almost certainly turn into a scandal about negligence. Worse, it could damage the school’s reputation.
So maybe this was their way of shutting things down before they could escalate. If this incident spread to the public, it wouldn’t just be a story about bad luck—it would be framed as a preventable accident, and the school would end up with a stain on its name.
Would the school be covering Bae Jung-yoon’s hospital bills too? He’s in a VIP room, after all. If I’d known that, I would’ve at least asked for an upgrade to a private room—maybe not VIP, but something better than a shared ward.
The thought crossed his mind, but since it wasn’t exactly a bad outcome from his standpoint, Go Hoon decided to keep it to himself.
What really bothered him was having to leave Bae Jung-yoon behind and return to Seoul. The idea of not being able to stay by his side just didn’t sit right. But still, he couldn’t just abandon his entire life and camp out in a VIP hospital room.
With effort, Go Hoon stood up and changed into his clothes. After completing the discharge paperwork, he got into the rental car Jo Seong-il had borrowed and headed home. When he asked about Jung-yoon’s car, wondering what would happen to it, Seong-il replied that someone had already come by the dorm and taken it away.
The atmosphere in the car during the drive back to Seoul was strangely subdued. Normally, Seong-il would be chattering away, but today he was unusually quiet. Not that Go Hoon minded—it let him close his eyes and rest in peace for once.
As they approached his neighborhood and he stepped out of the car, Seong-il suddenly brought something up.
“Oh right, something weird happened yesterday.”
“Weird?”
Go Hoon asked as he pulled his bag from the trunk, and Seong-il nodded.
“Yeah. Soo-yeon and I were the first ones to find the accident site. But the way it happened… it was seriously strange.”
That’s when he began explaining in detail—how a cat had appeared out of nowhere, and how following it had led them straight to the scene where Go Hoon and Jung-yoon were.
Go Hoon struggled to keep a straight face. He barely managed to react with a forced, “Yeah, that is kind of weird.” But then came Seong-il’s final comment—and it struck right to the gut.
“Come to think of it… that cat looked exactly like the one Bae Jung-yoon used to have.”
Unbelievable. Just how many times had this guy stared at Kkongddeok-i’s photos on Jung-yoon’s XStar account to recognize him like that?
For a moment, Go Hoon wanted to tell him not to bring up the cat if Jung-yoon ever woke up. But he didn’t really have a good enough reason to say something like that, so he let it go.
“Phew…”
Climbing the familiar stairs and stepping through the front door, Go Hoon let out a deep sigh.
This MT had started out as just a short trip before heading back home, but now everything felt completely off. Maybe because things had spiraled in a direction he never anticipated.
He dropped his bag carelessly on the floor and sank down in place. Sitting with his back against the wall, he stared blankly ahead as a deep stillness filled the room.
The house was eerily quiet. At Jung-yoon’s officetel, they’d always been together. Even during the MT, he’d been surrounded by people. The contrast now was suffocating.
Maybe that’s why the house felt especially empty today. On a whim, he played some loud music on his phone—something he normally wouldn’t listen to. But almost immediately, someone downstairs shouted for him to turn it down, and he had to shut it off.
Go Hoon lay flat on the floor. Blinking slowly up at the ceiling, he eventually reached for his phone.
[Let me know the second you wake up]
His fingers froze mid-typing. He couldn’t finish the sentence. Come to think of it, didn’t Jung-yoon’s phone break during the accident?
Even so, that wasn’t the real reason he couldn’t hit send. What truly stopped him was the doubt. When would Jung-yoon even see this message? Would he… ever?
No. Don’t go there. Don’t think like that.
Last time, Jung-yoon was fine too. Even when he collapsed with blood running down his head, he still got up like nothing happened and came back to him. So this time would be no different.
There’s no way Bae Jung-yoon would die from something like this. That belief—no, that desperate hope—began to swell inside him. Deep down, it wasn’t faith. It was a silent plea. Bae Jung-yoon must not die. He can’t.
“You… you can’t do this.”
You can’t just drop this enormous weight on my heart and leave like it means nothing. That’s not how this ends.
Suddenly, the memory hit him. That day at the animal hospital—how he’d been left alone, anxious and unsure, only to open his eyes and see Bae Jung-yoon standing there as if he’d always been.
Go Hoon reached out, grabbed his blanket, and threw it haphazardly over his head. Underneath it, he curled into himself.
He was exhausted. First, he needed sleep. Maybe when he opened his eyes again, Jung-yoon would be awake and calling him. He clung to that hope. That when he opened his eyes next time… Jung-yoon would be back.
