Patient Go Eun-jae

The moment he saw the name on the patient tag, the warmth drained from his eyes.

It was not a common name. And for someone being wheeled toward a VIP room, it was rarer still.

The elevator doors had just begun to close.

Mu-yeol reached out and pressed the open button. The two orderlies waiting in front turned to look at him.

"Go ahead."

"...Excuse me?"

One of them startled at the sudden offer and asked him to repeat it. Mu-yeol, his hand still on the button, tipped his chin toward the inside of the car.

"You were headed to a patient room, weren't you."

"Ah—yes. That's right."

"Then get on. It's fine."

"Uh... well."

Seung-yu, standing beside him, shot him a sidelong glance. He couldn't make sense of Mu-yeol's reaction at all, so he simply stared. At Mu-yeol's say-so, the two staff members pushed the bed into the elevator.

"The VVIP elevator for patient transport is under maintenance right now... Thank you for understanding."

The orderly rattled off the excuse, clearly embarrassed by the situation. Mu-yeol did not bother to answer.

His dark eyes remained fixed on the woman lying on the bed, and nowhere else.

He had hoped he was wrong. He wasn't. Mu-yeol's brow drew tight.

Her face was swollen from the surgery, but not so much that he couldn't recognize her. Her complexion was deathly pale; the lips that had once been so vividly red were drained of every trace of color. His gaze traveled down from her face to her arm.

More than half of that fragile body was wound tight in bandages.

Why. What could possibly have happened to leave her like this.

The elevator stopped and the doors opened. The orderly thanked him once more and pushed the bed out first, disappearing down the corridor.

"Sir."

He was still standing there, his gaze locked on her receding figure, when Seung-yu spoke up carefully beside him.

"Yeah."

Wrestling a mind that felt ready to split apart into some kind of order, Mu-yeol headed for the room where Jung-hyun was admitted.

"There's my grandson."

Affection filled Jung-hyun's eyes the instant he saw him. His lumbar disc was genuinely bad—but whenever he wanted to see his busy grandson, Jung-hyun used the pain as a pretext to check himself in.

He knew the soft-hearted boy would have no choice but to come. His grandson had moved out of the family home; without a method like this, there was simply no way to lay eyes on Mu-yeol, who was always too busy for anything else.

"How are you feeling?"

Mu-yeol asked it quietly as he approached the bed. His hands were in his pockets, his posture a little askew—but worry flickered through his eyes as he looked at Jung-hyun.

"Same as always. That's what getting old does to you."

Jung-hyun cleared his throat and made to push himself up off the bed. Secretary Jo, his chief of staff, moved in at once—but Mu-yeol lifted his right hand, stopping him.

"I'll do it."

He went to Jung-hyun and half-gathered the old man against him as he helped him down. The aged body was terribly thin. Settled in his sturdy grandson's arms, Jung-hyun looked up at him with a thoroughly satisfied smile.

"Has my eldest grandson had dinner?"

"No. Thanks. To. You. calling me in, I came straight here without eating."

Jung-hyun knew perfectly well that the syllables had been broken apart on purpose, so he would hear every one of them. Mu-yeol, who had climbed the ranks step by careful step, had always delivered results beyond what was expected of him.

Three years into the role of CEO. The boy who more than pulled his own weight was, to his grandfather, simply a source of pride.

"Oh dear. Going hungry like that."

"Then maybe you shouldn't have summoned me. You know perfectly well how busy I am."

"Don't act like you're running the whole company by yourself."

Jung-hyun clicked his tongue, but he was smiling. Mu-yeol settled him carefully onto the sofa. The words he tossed out were careless, almost indifferent—but every movement as he looked after his grandfather was endlessly tender.

"Have you had dinner, sir?"

"I have. If you're hungry, we can eat something first."

Of course. He was in pain, no doubt—but the real reason he'd checked himself in this time was, once again, Korean chess.

Watching Jung-hyun's true motives sit so plainly on his face, Mu-yeol let out a faint, incredulous laugh.

Cha Jung-hyun was still ice-cold and unyielding toward his own son, Won-seung. In front of his grandson, he was always disarmed. Mu-yeol knew how lonely the old man got on his own. That was why he had set aside his dinner plans and come here.

"I'm fine."

He said it, but the scene he had just witnessed kept floating through his mind, refusing to settle.

By now, a call should have come—if not from anyone else, then at least from Seon-ju. The thought had barely formed when the phone inside his jacket began to vibrate. He drew it from his pocket, checked the caller, and brought it straight to his ear. So much for that aristocratic composure of hers.

"Yes, Mother."

"I'm here to see the Chairman."

Her voice on the other end was hurried. From the tone of his mother, Oh Seon-ju, Mu-yeol was certain.

What he had seen was exactly what he thought it was.

Mu-yeol's knuckles tightened around the phone. While he was still searching for something to say, Jung-hyun called to him from the side. Only then did his gaze find his grandfather.

"Mother, I'll call you back."

The moment he hung up, color rose in Jung-hyun's face. Mu-yeol shrugged off his jacket and tossed it onto the sofa, then sat down across from him. He rolled back his shirtsleeves, loosened his tie, and dropped it onto the table as if he were throwing it away.

"Shall we have a game, grandson? It's been too long."

"You'd best prepare yourself. I won't be going easy on you today. And I don't want to hear any excuses afterward."

"Bring it on. When have I ever made excuses?"

Jung-hyun's eyes curved into a thoroughly pleased smile as he looked at his grandson.

She had no idea how long she had been asleep. According to the nurse, she had done nothing but sleep for three days.

Her last memory was of sitting at the piano in the recital hall, running through the rehearsal.

Eun-jae stared blankly out the window.

Darkness had already settled over the world outside. When she woke, so much had changed. Her half-destroyed body. The recital. Her future.

The ceiling had collapsed, they told her. It had come down on her while she was rehearsing.

Her right arm and shoulder had been crushed almost to pieces—and even that, they said, had been a miracle of luck.

"It's a blessing it didn't fall on your head," her attending physician had told her. "If it had, you could have died instantly, right there."

She couldn't believe it. Even looking at an arm she still could not move, none of it felt real.

A dream. It had to be a dream. Perhaps she had been refusing to accept reality. But the pain spoke a language she could not argue with. The analgesics could not hold it; she had suffered through it more times than she could count.

It was her fifth day in the hospital. Not a single member of her family had come to the room. She had lived her entire life this way, and still she felt it all over again. She was utterly, thoroughly alone.

She let out a long breath.

Maybe some air would help. Choked by the tightness in her throat, Eun-jae rose from the bed. She pulled the needle from the back of her hand, and bright red blood welled and dripped down the stark white skin.

She looked at it with a dry, empty expression, then slowly left the room.

The night wind at the end of November was bitterly cold. Dressed in nothing but a hospital gown, her slender frame trembled like a leaf. Perhaps because of the hour, the rooftop garden—meant as a place of rest—was empty. Not a soul in sight.

Eun-jae sat down on the bench closest to the railing and looked out at the glittering nightscape of Seoul.

She had come up because the cramped hospital room had been suffocating. Even here, with the sky wide open above her, the tightness in her chest refused to ease.

He had said it without a shred of hesitation. She knew that a doctor's work was, in part, to deliver facts without feeling. Being on the receiving end of it, however, was not pleasant in the least.

To her, those words had been nothing short of a death sentence.

"If I had just..."

Died right there. Wouldn't that have been better?

She could almost hear Hong Mi-jung's voice, pouring those cruel words down on her. She would not be able to make good on that cost anymore. Would they throw her away, then? Perhaps simply being discarded would be the kinder thing.

What had she been so afraid of, clinging on like that? Now that she had reached a dead end, her heart was strangely calm.

Because it meant she would no longer have to suffer in that hell.

Yes. This was better. She tried to settle the thought in her mind—so why did her heart ache like this?

"...Hh."

A tear slipped down her white cheek, and then another.

It had all felt like a dream. She hadn't been able to believe it. For days she had sat in a daze, and only now did every piece of it land against her skin. The thought that it was all over now sent the tears pouring down without end.

As if she were finally vomiting up everything she had pressed down and swallowed, Eun-jae clutched her injured right arm and wept for a long, long time.

She had never even had a place to cry alone like this. How could a strange, unfamiliar space feel so much like relief?

With eyes still swimming with tears, Eun-jae looked down at the drop beyond the building. Then, as if something had taken hold of her, she rose from the bench.

"Hah..."