The Girl in the Yellow Dress
"Um, Yu-yeong?"
A familiar voice called out from behind her. It was Jeong-in's primary nurse.
The nurse held out a small bag of candy toward Yu-yeong as she turned around.
"Oh."
"Your grandmother asked me to give this to you."
Having delivered her harsh words to her granddaughter, the old woman had evidently couldn't stop worrying afterward — the sight of her granddaughter crying must have lodged itself squarely in her chest, and so she'd asked the nurse for this favor.
Yu-yeong accepted the bag, biting down hard on her lip against the surge of emotion rising in her throat.
"Thank you... and about my grandmother..."
Yu-yeong cut herself off mid-sentence, pulled a white envelope from her bag, and pressed it into the nurse's hand.
Every time she visited the hospital, she slipped something to her grandmother's primary nurse. It was her sorry penance — a filial guilt she could not erase, for being a granddaughter who couldn't come every day.
"Please take good care of her..."
"You really don't have to, every time..."
The nurse protested twice, visibly uncomfortable, but after glancing around she finally accepted the envelope.
"Thank you so much. Truly."
"Of course, don't worry. And if anything happens, I'll be the very first person you call."
At the nurse's words, Yu-yeong gave a small nod, hugged the bag of candy to her chest, and turned away.
The child who had been standing by the window was already gone. Only then did Yu-yeong notice that the strange chill in the air had vanished with her.
She went off to Grandmother's room. That little thing, lingering this close to death like that... it can't be good for her.
With that thought, Yu-yeong headed for the elevator.
"Yu-yeong, what the..."
Seul-a, who had been waiting in the van in the hospital parking lot, did a double take at the sight of Yu-yeong's face, drained of all color.
The girl had bounced inside an hour earlier, loaded down with snacks and giddy at the thought of seeing her grandmother — and she'd come back out looking like she was headed to a funeral. Of course Seul-a was startled.
"...Let's — let's go home. I'll drive you."
Seul-a didn't press her with questions. She felt like she already knew without asking.
Having watched over Yu-yeong from closer than anyone, Seul-a knew better than the rumors ever suggested how fragile the girl really was.
"Unni."
"Yeah?"
"Grandma, she... Grandma said..."
Once she was in the van, under Seul-a's worried gaze, Yu-yeong finally let the tears she'd been holding back spill over again.
The bag of candy tumbled limply from her lap, and Yu-yeong stuttered out the rest.
"Grandma told me... told me not to hurt anyone."
At that heartbreaking confession, Seul-a, gripping the wheel in the driver's seat, furrowed her brow slightly.
In all the time Seul-a had known her, Yu-yeong had never once been someone who hurt other people.
Though, of course, that endless string of scandals might well have been nothing *but* wounds inflicted on others.
"Yu-yeong."
"I'm a bad person."
She wept like a child — like a girl who hadn't finished growing — and Seul-a couldn't hold back a sigh.
She didn't need to imagine how much it hurt to brand yourself a bad person like that. It was written all over her. It wasn't simple self-pity either. Whatever lay at the bottom of it, Seul-a couldn't know — but she wanted, more than anything, to tell Yu-yeong that she was wrong about herself.
"You're not a bad person. I know you."
With those final words, Seul-a started the engine and pulled out. The whole drive down the dark road, the faint sound of weeping drifted from the back seat, and it made her heart ache all the more.
Yu-yeong didn't even allow herself to cry out loud, afraid of being a burden to Seul-a.
She simply bit down on her lip and tried to swallow the sobs. She knew her tears would weigh on Seul-a — and she knew that Jeong-in, who had pressed that bag of peanut candy into the nurse's hands for her granddaughter's sake, would grieve to hear them.
It felt as though her crying would ride the night wind all the way to her grandmother's ear and keep her awake.
And so Yu-yeong choked back her tears, hiccup by hiccup, peeled one of the candies her grandmother had sent, and put it in her mouth.
Sweet and nutty, the flavor filled her whole mouth.
I'll only cry today.
I won't cry after this.
Somehow she felt that if she cried for too long, too often, her grandmother would find out.
Down a dim hospital corridor, a little girl played with a red ball. The small rubber ball bounced against the floor with a brisk thump-thump-thump-thump, then rolled off with a rumble toward the far end of the hall.
The girl in the yellow dress scampered after it.
Tap tap tap tap.
Churning her adorable little legs with all her might, she scooped the ball up — and rolled it off in the opposite direction.
The red ball trundled along until it struck a nurse's leg.
"Eek!"
In that instant the nurse kicked at empty air, lost her footing entirely, and collapsed to the floor in a heap.
The sound shattered the silence, and the nurses on night duty came rushing out in alarm.
"What happened?!"
"N-nothing..."
The fallen nurse brushed off her backside, stood up, and shook her head. Then she stared down at her own feet, puzzling over something, and tilted her head.
"That's strange..."
"What is? Why?"
"It's nothing. I just felt like something caught my foot."
Wondering whether someone had spilled a drink, the nurse peered closely at the floor before shaking her head at last.
"You're just worn out."
"Maybe so."
Concluding that her legs had simply given out from the string of night shifts these past few days, the nurse carried on down the corridor.
Beneath her feet, the girl who had crouched low covered her mouth with both small hands and giggled.
It was so funny — the grown-up had tripped over her ball and toppled over, and didn't even know why.
"That was fun," the girl said.
Then she sat quietly on the floor, gazing up at the nurses and doctors passing through the corridor.
She even deliberately tripped the feet of adults walking by, but not a single soul noticed her. Everyone just muttered something strange about the hallway being slippery and walked straight past her.
Before long, the girl's lips pushed out in a sulky pout.
The girl with pigtails grabbed, this time, the ankle of a caregiver passing right in front of her.
"Ma'am, play with me."
But no one could hear the girl's voice. Watching the caregiver walk away, ignoring her tantrum entirely, the girl grew so disconsolate that she flopped down flat in the middle of the corridor.
By now her mother was supposed to come rushing out and scold her for dirtying her dress — but that didn't happen anymore, either.
Good children go to bed early. That's how you grow up nice and tall.
Suddenly the girl remembered Yu-yeong's face, telling her she had to sleep early to grow tall.
She had already been lingering in this hospital for years, yet she hadn't grown a single centimeter. And Yu-yeong had smiled at her so warmly anyway, and told her that sleeping early would make her taller. She had liked that.
Plenty of people had noticed her before. But they all either pretended not to see her or fled in wide-eyed terror.
The girl picked herself up, hopped and skipped down the hospital corridor, and slipped straight into the room where Yu-yeong's grandmother, Jeong-in, lay.
Because if she stayed there, she could see Yu-yeong again.
The thought somehow lifted her spirits, and the girl hopped up onto Jeong-in's bed and lay down.
"Sleep early, and I'll grow up tall!"
Recalling the words Yu-yeong had given her, the girl folded her two hands neatly on her chest and closed her eyes.
She slept well, like a good girl.
Something about Yu-yeong's words — spoken with that pretty smile, to her, of all people, when she recognized her — made it feel as though she really might wake up taller tomorrow morning.
The girl stayed in Jeong-in's room for four days. The television Jeong-in kept on showed Yu-yeong all day long — dancing, singing, acting in a hanbok, laughing in beautiful clothes.
The girl sat beside Jeong-in and stared hard at the Yu-yeong on the screen. She thought that when she grew up, she wanted to become someone dazzling like that.
Then, on the fifth day, Yu-yeong came back to Jeong-in's room.
"Grandma! I'm here!"
Yu-yeong's arms were full of candies and snacks. And she was wearing a yellow dress — one that looked almost exactly like the girl's own.
As if to show that only in her grandmother's arms did she want to turn back into a little kid.
"I'm shooting out in Paju right now, but I came because I missed you."
Yu-yeong said this with a smile aimed at Jeong-in.
The girl hovered close by Yu-yeong's side, but somehow, today, Yu-yeong seemed unable to see her. The thought made her sulk a little, her expression clouding over with petulance.
And that day, on Yu-yeong's back as she left the hospital — unnoticed by anyone — rode the little girl in the yellow dress, her pigtails swaying as she clung on.