The Man Who Rolled In (3)

It was an attitude far too nonchalant for a man who'd had his memory wiped clean. No—his reaction went beyond calm and bordered on outright optimism, which was hard to believe. Yun-seo studied his expression carefully.

Among patients with severe brain injuries, there were occasional cases where a defense mechanism kicked in—denying reality outright, or pretending to be fine while shutting down their emotions entirely.

Perhaps this man's condition was that serious, too…….

"What? Is there something on my face?"

But his eyes were far too composed to belong to someone in confusion. The one actually floundering in bewilderment was Yun-seo herself.

"No, aren't you anxious? You don't even know who you are……."

"Will worrying fix anything? Eh, I'll wait it out and things will work themselves out somehow. I'm alive, for starters."

The man answered offhandedly as he glanced around the room, then tried to bolt upright and winced hard. He looked down at the emergency dressing on his abdomen and rubbed idly at his stomach.

"Anyway, this hurts like hell. I got stabbed, right? Whoever did it seems to have cracked my skull in for good measure, too."

"No!"

Her worry evaporated in an instant. At the mere suggestion of a bashed-in skull, Yun-seo cried out before she could stop herself. The man's eyes narrowed as his gaze snapped back to her.

"No, what do you mean, no."

"Ah, your head…… it may have hit things here and there while the waves carried you ashore. This area is full of rocks, you see."

He looked ready to hunt down the person who'd put her in that state and finish them off on the spot—she couldn't bring herself to say a word. Because frankly, confessing that she was the main culprit behind his cracked head was…… far too terrifying.

While Yun-seo furtively avoided his gaze, the man tilted his head sharply from side to side and planted a foot on the floor.

Then, giving her no room to retreat, he suddenly bent at the waist and leveled his eyes with hers. The sharp sting of antiseptic rushing in with an unfamiliar sense of pressure choked the breath from her for a moment.

"Wh-what is it?"

"I got a strong feeling that that's not how it happened. Lost memories or not, my instincts are telling me they're killer."

The man muttered as he looked down at his stitched abdomen. Then, as his gaze swept slowly around the clinic, he abruptly began swinging his arms in wide circles. At the ominous sound of his joints cracking into place, Yun-seo pressed her lower lip tight and swallowed.

"This is definitely the work of someone who blindsided me. The moment I remember, Geumma is going to……"

The frost-cold murderous intent laced through that unfinished sentence was impossible to miss, and for an instant the world swam before Yun-seo's eyes.

'It may only be temporary, so let's have you rest a little longer and monitor your progress…….'

She couldn't even remember what she'd said to him.

Leaving the man's chilling warning behind, Yun-seo fled into the back on-call room under the pretext of remembering some urgent business.

She'd left the IV properly in place and told him to call immediately if anything felt wrong, so surely nothing would happen. And above all, the CCTV seemed to be working just fine…….

"Haaah……."

The moment the taut tension released, everything before her eyes began to blur. Yun-seo barely kept her trembling legs under her as she dropped heavily into the office chair at her desk.

He's going to kill me.

Kill me.

Kill me.

The ominous words he'd left unsaid circled her ears like hallucinations. The moment his skull had been slammed into the ground in the downpour replayed in her mind in slow motion.

Anyone would have done it, she had no choice, she chanted to herself a hundred times—but even after all that rationalizing, one fact remained unchanged: she had gotten hopelessly entangled with no ordinary man.

Her mind in disarray, Yun-seo buried herself deep in the chair and stared at the crackling old monitor. Her anxious gaze drifted across the bluish-gray screen.

"What do I do?"

It seemed he'd had no intention whatsoever of lying quietly as he'd been told.

On screen, the man was prowling around the clinic like it was his own bedroom. He gazed out the window, picked up the remote and tried switching on the television. Then, without warning, he shoved his face right up to the camera lens.

"Ack!"

Startled by the murderous glare filling the entire monitor, Yun-seo kicked hard against the floor. Her chair rolled backward with a squeal of wheels, and only afterward did she catch her breath, hand pressed to her chest. Her heart was pounding like mad.

Thankfully, his exploration seemed to be over—the man walked back toward the bed without further incident.

Maybe he'll behave himself now. Just as relief washed over her, Yun-seo's eyes went wide with shock all over again. With the IV line dangling from his arm, the man had abruptly dropped to the floor.

"……What is he doing right now?"

The incredulous question quickly became a staggering reality. The man launched into push-ups without hesitation, right there on the floor.

Every time he descended and pushed back up, the muscles across his back roiled as though about to burst. Whether his freshly stitched stomach split open or not, he drove his body like a machine—and the sheer madness of it made Yun-seo's eyes waver uneasily.

She could almost hear his rough breathing piercing through the screen. In, out.

"……Is he an athlete, maybe?"

She ran the flimsy hope circuit, but it didn't last long.

What kind of sport in the world leaves scars that vicious? However charitably she tried to look at it, those were clearly marks carved in life-or-death combat.

Even in the instant he'd lost his memory, he was ruthlessly tempering his body—wasn't that the instinctive training of a man preparing to walk back into a world where every day was a fight to the death?

She should have run out right that moment and shouted at him that his wound would tear open, but her feet simply wouldn't carry her.

"……I'm genuinely scared."

If she'd had even one more staff member, she might have mustered the courage to say something. Unfortunately, this remote island clinic, already gasping under a labor shortage, had no assistant beyond herself. The one employee she'd had recently had endured island life just long enough to flee, and the county office had done nothing but repeat vague promises about reinforcements ever since—no word since.

It was then, as Yun-seo anxiously chewed her nails and paced the on-call room, that bright sunlight flooded her vision. She rushed to the window, and true to some miracle, the downpour had stopped and the dark clouds were parting overhead.

Color returned to her gloomy face in an instant.

The boat could run. She could finally reach Bondo. Hurriedly, she picked up the receiver and dialed the police station, urgency in every keystroke.

Ring-ring— ring-ring—

"Emergency, 112." After a brief connection tone, a bored police officer's voice came through.

"Yes, is this the Nokdong Maritime Police Station? This is the Yanggido Public Health Sub-clinic. The thing is……"

Click.

Before Yun-seo could even finish her sentence, the call was cut off without ceremony. No—more precisely, a massive hand that had crept up on her without her noticing was now pressing down heavily on the receiver cradle.

"What do you think you're doing?"

The low voice slid down over the crown of her head and sent a chill racing along her spine. Yun-seo shrieked and shot straight up from her seat.

"You can't just barge in without even knocking—!"

"You said to come if anything changed. I knocked three times and you didn't answer."

At his matter-of-fact reply, Yun-seo's lips pressed into a tight line.

Having just witnessed his brutal exercise regimen on the monitor, she couldn't help worrying that his wound had split open—her gaze drifted naturally to the man's abdomen.

She was still fidgeting, thinking she really should have stopped him, when he held out the IV line he'd yanked free.

"This thing fell out before the bag even finished. I came to get it put back in."

"Oh…… I see. Well, as it happens, the rain just stopped and I was about to call the Bondo police station. It would be best if you could get to a proper hospital for treatment, so if you'd just let go of this……"

Yun-seo cast a pointed glance at the man's enormous hand still pressing down on the receiver cradle, but he didn't budge an inch.

"No."

At that single, flat refusal, her gaze, pinned atop the back of that massive hand, climbed slowly upward. The moment she met those jet-black eyes head-on, the memory of his chilling warning resurfaced.

"Wh-why not? The sooner you get to a real hospital, the sooner you'll heal, and your memory too……"

"I don't want to go out there."

Yun-seo blinked her wide eyes. The man tilted his head at an angle and curled the corner of his mouth upward.

"There's such a thing as a person's gut instinct. I imagine you've already got a pretty good idea."

"I really don't know what you mean……"

"My estimate says that if I step outside looking like this, a peaceful life wandering around is off the table. Does the bastard who put a hole in my stomach seem like a normal, reasonable man to you?"

Yun-seo's gaze fell once more to the blood-soaked gauze.

It was certainly true that if he were entangled in a turf war between criminal organizations or some violent crime, being handed over to the police like this would likely just mean someone killed him before long.

"Still, it's hardly fair to toss someone out into the street when he can't even remember his own name."