Everything We Owe

“Hhk… hhk…!”

A strangled sound from somewhere in the apartment dragged Harin out of sleep. Squinting against the gray light of dawn, she wondered if she'd imagined it, twisting her body from where she lay sprawled toward her grandmother's room as her hand groped for her phone.

It was just shy of four in the morning. She meant to check the time, then let herself sink back into the flood of sleep.

“Hhk… h-hhk…!”

Harin's eyes snapped open. She hadn't imagined it. She threw off the covers and sat up in one motion.

“Grandma…?”

She stared blankly at the frosted sliding door, unlit behind. In place of an answer, a strange rasping breath seeped through the air, as if the room itself were gasping and leaking.

Her heart plummeted.

Harin bolted straight into the room.

She flung the door open, and in the predawn light she saw her grandmother, rigid. Her eyes had rolled back until only the whites showed; white foam was spreading at the corners of her mouth; her jaw was locked upward and her whole body shook as if it were being torn apart.

“Grandma! Grandma!”

Harin dropped to her knees and seized her grandmother's shoulders, shaking them. The frail arm flopped limply, but no consciousness returned.

“Grandma, please, wake up!”

Her throat was closing. It felt as though her own breath would go with it.

Behind her came the sound of stirring.

“S-Sis, what's, what's wrong with Grandma…?”

Hayul stood rooted to the doorway. His half-awake eyes began to tremble with fear, glistening with tears.

With no time to answer, Harin snatched up her phone with shaking hands and dialed 119.

“Sh-she can't breathe properly! Her eyes keep rolling back—!”

Her tongue had stiffened, her mouth barely obeying, and all that came out was a sound that might have been crying or terror—she couldn't tell which.

By the time the ambulance arrived, her fingers were numb and trembling from cold. Her grandmother, still barely clinging on through the convulsions, was transferred to the stretcher by the paramedics, and Harin followed, her shoes half on her feet.

The emergency room of the general hospital.

While the medical staff swarmed around her grandmother, working through the emergency procedures, the attending doctor approached with a weary face. He confirmed that Harin was the guardian, then walked her through a cascade of explanations and gathered her signatures.

Consent for surgery. Consent for general anesthesia. Consent for non-covered medical expenses. Consent for blood transfusion…

She had no idea there could be so many forms, but Harin, her mind a blank, signed them all without question.

“Given her age, her underlying conditions, and what the MRI shows, the risk of death during surgery is high. The aneurysm has already ruptured, and even if the operation succeeds, she may lose some or all of her speech and motor function. Do you fully understand all of these risks?”

“…Yes.”

She didn't understand any of it. She would agree to anything—she only wanted to get down on her knees and beg them to save her grandmother.

Her grandmother was being wheeled down the corridor toward the operating room on a mobile bed.

Wrapped in a thin blue sheet, that small body looked smaller than ever. You who were always so light were drifting further and further away from this world.

I've lived long enough, sweetheart.

I only ever want good things for you.

Don't carry the weight of it.

It occurred to her that this might be the last time she ever heard her grandmother's voice.

When her grandmother vanished behind the operating room's automatic doors, Harin's breathing turned rough and ragged.

I should have just slept beside her. I should have held her hand, just once. I should have told her, at least once, that I really love her.

Regret came crashing over her like madness.

A small hand clutched at the hem of her pajama pants from behind. Hayul was looking up at her, biting down hard on his lip, eyes wide with fear.

Harin took the child's hand with hollow eyes. His palm was slick with cold sweat.

“It's going to be okay.”

Even as the words left her mouth, they felt like a lie.

“It's okay. It'll be okay.”

She whispered it again as she stared blankly toward the operating room—unable to tell whether she was saying it for Hayul, or for herself, who felt about to come apart at any moment.

“We completed the surgery as well as it possibly could have been done within the limits we faced. But the damage at the time of the rupture was severe. Intracranial pressure is high, and the brain itself is badly swollen, so the chances of her regaining consciousness are low…”

The doctor continued carefully at the bedside of her grandmother, who lay deathly still amid a web of machines—but to Harin, every word sounded like a death sentence.

“The surgery alone comes to two million won, and once you factor in the tests, treatments, hospital room, and caregiver costs still to come, you'll need to plan on five to ten million won a month.”

The clerk at the billing office was no better. Just hearing it made her want to let go of life entirely.

She sank into one of the chairs lined up outside the billing office, and the noise crashed over her all at once—the shuffle of passing feet, the low murmur of voices, the cheerful chime of the number ticket system.

And through all of it, the account balance glowing on her phone's banking screen made even paying today's surgery bill look impossible.

Grrrowl.

At the hungry sound beside her, Harin turned her head. Hayul was pressing a hand like a curled bracken frond against his stomach, looking up at her uncomfortably.

“Hungry?”

At her question, Hayul nodded cautiously. Lunchtime had long since come and gone. He'd had nothing to eat since before dawn, trailing at her heels the whole time—of course he was hungry.

Harin took him down to the convenience store on the hospital's first floor. She bought kimbap and Chapagetti and sat down at a table. Hayul, watching her face carefully, hesitantly picked up his chopsticks.

“A-aren't you ea-eating, Sis?”

“No. I'm not hungry.”

It wasn't hunger so much as a burning in her gut. It felt like her insides were melting away.

Harin watched him eat in silence.

How was the child taking in everything that was happening? And how was she ever supposed to explain it? Her head throbbed at the thought.

But the truth was bleak: just as the doctor had said, her grandmother would lie there like the dead and never wake, and then she would be gone.

Harin's lowered eyelids trembled. She squeezed her eyes shut, forcing down the tears rising in her throat. This was no time to cry.

With no standard rooms left in the hospital, they'd been given a private one—and paying for it meant finding more part-time work. Which meant Hayul would spend even more hours alone. How was she supposed to bring that up? She didn't even know where to begin.

Just then, she felt her phone vibrate in her pocket.

It was the owner of the barbecue restaurant.

Only then did Harin remember that she'd missed every single one of her shifts today.

“I need to take a call. Wait right here, okay?”

She said it gently to Hayul, then stepped outside the convenience store and answered.

“Ah—sir. I'm so sorry…”

The moment she tried to speak, her throat seized up. Sweat soaked the palm clenched around the hem of her pajama pants. Her panic only made the words spill out longer.

“My grandmother had emergency surgery… Yes, with caring for her, I don't think I'll be able to come in for a while. I'll call you once things are settled. I'm truly sorry.”

Harin glanced down the corridor and bowed her head slightly. At the sympathy in the owner's voice through the receiver, she bit her lip hard.

The barbecue restaurant owner had been generous.

Her chest heaved—but she had no room to be tossed around by a single phone call.

Crouching where she stood, she called the gym director and explained the situation.

The director was generous too. Even as relief washed over her, the guilt only deepened. Shamefully, the word advance clawed its way up her throat—

“…Yes, I'm truly sorry.”

Before that could escape, she hurried the call to an end.

“Haa…”

Harin stared blankly into the air. Her gaze landed on a bank sign across the street.

Money. She needed money.

Swallowing her pride, she reached out to the friends she'd trained with until recently. A million won—no, five hundred, even a hundred thousand, anything, just a short-term loan toward the treatment costs…

The answers were all the same.

Her fingertip hovered for a moment over the number of her high school boxing coach.

If anyone might truly lend her the money, it would be him. Which was exactly why she couldn't bring herself to call.

She could imagine how heartbroken he'd be if a student he hadn't heard from in nearly ten years called out of nowhere and immediately started talking about money.

As she scrolled through her recent call log, one unsaved number caught Harin's eye.

Yoon Lee-gang. His number.