#35. Temperature of the Heart (5)
While I was frozen stiff from shock, Na Jihan, whose expression was scrunched up enough to look menacing, strode toward me.
I had to do something. At least I had to say something. He looked as surprised as I was, maybe even more so.
My head seemed to barely reach a conclusion, but my body wouldn’t follow at all. All I could do was stare at Na Jihan while frozen stiff. My heart was beating so loudly and frantically that my ears felt muffled.
Na Jihan knelt on the floor in front of me and gripped both my wrists firmly. His voice rang out, cutting through sounds that seemed to be booming and buzzing.
“Don’t tense your hands.”
“……”
“It’s okay, Yoon Seowoo. Look at me. Look at me… That’s right. Slowly relax your hands.”
The whisper that it was okay continued a couple more times.
Only then did I gasp for the breath I had been holding. A tingling sensation began to spread from my hands. It seemed like blood was finally flowing. No, was it flowing because of the bleeding? My thoughts weren’t working properly.
Na Hyeonjun, who had gone somewhere and come back, held something out to me. Na Jihan took the item and brought it to my palm. It was cold and damp.
“Is it bad enough to need stitches? Wouldn’t it be better to wash it out? Shouldn’t we go to the bathroom and take a look?”
“He seems frozen from shock. Let’s just do it here and clean up later. Wouldn’t it be better not to go to the emergency room if we can help it?”
“…Right, that’s true too. Then I’ll just have to pour this. Seowoo, bear with it even if it stings a bit. This is saline solution, so it’s better than water.”
“Yoon Seowoo, just look at me. Don’t look anywhere else, just keep looking here.”
While I stared at him blankly, Na Jihan examined my hand. As always when he concentrated on something, his brow was deeply furrowed.
“It’s a wide cut so there’s a lot of bleeding. But it seems like the bleeding is stopping bit by bit.”
“Nothing’s embedded in it, it’s clean. The wound is wide so it’s a bit ambiguous, but will it be okay?”
The sound of rustling and Ahn Haesol’s voice followed in turn.
“There was a cutter blade in the cookie. The fortunate thing is that it was a new blade so it wasn’t rusted… There’s no way they would sell something like this anywhere. Seowoo, who did you get this from?”
When I couldn’t answer right away and just stared blankly, Na Jihan tapped my cheek to wake me up. His hands, which were always a bit warmer than mine, were cold just for now.
“No matter how shocked you are, you need to snap out of it now, Yoon Seowoo. Where did you get this?”
“……”
“Answer properly. Who gave it to you and when did you receive it.”
I answered incoherently while searching my memory.
“On the way back from practice… They asked if I was alone again today, so I said yes. Then they said they’d take care of just mine… They said they made it themselves so I couldn’t refuse and accepted it…”
Na Hyeonjun asked in a rarely cold voice.
“You’re saying they recognized you and gave it to you?”
“Yeah. Since they were near the fans, I thought that was natural…”
“Fan?”
Na Jihan cut off my words with a sharp tone.
“I told you before that not everyone who hangs around and acts familiar is a fan, didn’t I?”
He had.
“I told you to be more careful since someone followed you all the way to your house and caused trouble.”
That too… yes, he had. In the same clear and strict tone as now.
“Yoon Seowoo.”
The moment I seemed to finally come to my senses, Na Jihan’s scolding poured out.
“Are you crazy? How can you carelessly accept things like this without any fear? You should be careful even with branded items, but homemade snacks from unknown sources? Why does a grown person go around so absent-minded?”
My scattered mind was finally, slowly returning to its place. The senses that had been paralyzed from shock also began to come alive one by one.
I looked down at the wound on my palm that hadn’t finished bleeding yet. It seemed that when I squeezed the cookie hard, the blade cut my hand in a long horizontal line, and drops of blood were welling up from the split flesh.
Sharp, stinging pain also bubbled up drop by drop. Strangely, it resembled sadness.
“I didn’t know.”
Because they smiled at me warmly. Because they smiled instead of yelling at me. Because they gave me cookies instead of throwing eggs at me.
So I couldn’t think that they might be someone who hated me.
I admit it. I was naive to the point of being careless. As he said, I had experienced problems before, yet I was absurdly defenseless. With debut right around the corner, I still didn’t have the proper mindset of an idol.
I know that, but still.
“There’s no need to scold me this much…”
I had said the same thing when being scolded for hours about choreography. But it was strangely different from then. Being strict and being hurtful are different things, and the current Na Jihan was closer to the latter.
“It’s not like I was hurt badly enough to go to the emergency room, and I don’t even remember who that person was. I didn’t do anything wrong either… so let’s just let it go.”
Even though I knew I should be obedient since I hadn’t done anything right, after saying it, it sounded a bit petulant.
Of course, Na Jihan didn’t indulge my whining.
“Yoon Seowoo. Is this a situation to be sulky because you don’t like being scolded?”
“……”
“Fine. Let’s say you were deceived because you didn’t know, as you said. You got hurt like this, so what were you going to do if we weren’t here? What gets solved by you freezing up like that when you’re shocked?”
“Jihan.”
I bit my lip hard and swallowed the rising emotion.
“You don’t have to keep getting angry like that. I know it’s my fault.”
“……”
“I was wrong. I’m sorry, and I’m embarrassed…”
Na Jihan, who had rushed over to take care of me, was so grateful, yet.
“Let go of my hand now.”
It felt a bit resentful that he would push me this far in front of the other two people. So I pulled my hand from his grip and turned my gaze away.
But.
“Where are you going?”
Na Jihan frowned deeply and grabbed my wrist. His attitude was firm, as if he couldn’t back down.
“The bleeding hasn’t stopped yet. I need to keep watching. If it doesn’t seem like it’ll heal properly, it might be better to go to the hospital even now.”
I didn’t want that. I shook my head frantically.
“I don’t want to make a big deal out of it. I’m fine now.”
I wasn’t deliberately lying. It wasn’t unbearably painful enough to make such a fuss.
Most of all, I hated the emergency room. It was a place I instinctively rejected, so unless there was a fatal problem, I didn’t want to cross that threshold.
Even though Na Jihan couldn’t not know that feeling.
“You, really…”
“Jihan.”
Just then, Ahn Haesol intervened. He seemed to have judged that we were about to get into an argument.
“Instead of staying like this, come with me and help prepare dinner. We need to organize our stuff too. I’d like to ask manager hyung to clean up here, would that be okay?”
Na Hyeonjun also seemed to think he needed to handle the serious atmosphere and intervened.
“Right. That would be good. I bought various things to eat with Seowoo anyway. Go help with preparing the ingredients.”
“Hyung.”
“Na Jihan.”
Na Hyeonjun said while helping him up.
“I need to do my job as a manager too. Move aside.”
Na Hyeonjun, who had brought a first aid kit, helped with the treatment with calm hands. Silence continued while he applied disinfectant to both palms and carefully wrapped them with bandages.
“You were careless this time, Seowoo.”
I had nothing to say. Somewhere kept stinging.
“It’s okay if you need a lot of care. It’s not like Jihan finds that bothersome, and I’m confident about that kind of thing too. But someone can’t be by your side every moment.”
“……”
“Since we’re talking about it, that incident where someone came to your house. You didn’t properly share that situation with the company either.”
At his words about wanting to scold me once, I obediently lowered my eyes.
“Do you think you’ll be a professional after debuting? No. You’re already a professional before debuting. I understand that you lack awareness since you joined an already ongoing project, but you guys aren’t the only ones whose livelihood depends on Arcus.”
I understand. The expression “public figure” doesn’t exist for nothing. We’re just the people who stand at the very front.
Na Hyeonjun probably wanted to say that this injury was irresponsible, beyond just being careless. And he didn’t want to just stop at scolding me, but wanted to warn me so the same thing wouldn’t happen again.
It was what he had to say as a hyung I knew, as an adult, and as a manager. I nodded silently.
“Jihan was a bit sharp because he was surprised. He reacts strongly to things involving you, not other matters.”
My lips trembled from the throbbing sensation. What kind of expression was I making? I must look stupid.
As if proving my thoughts, he spoke in a much softer voice.
“Let’s eat dinner. I was worried because it seemed like you’ve been eating alone throughout the holiday. I brought some holiday food, and I also brought mushrooms to make hot pot…”
“Sorry.”
“Just be careful from now on. That’s fine…”
“I’m sorry about today’s incident too, but not just that.”
I gently clenched and unclenched my hand, then slowly got up from my seat.
“The three of you eat dinner. I don’t want to eat.”
Author: Hyacinthus B
Hyacinthus
