TWELVE 36

I saved you?

No, Gi Seoin is confused.

I was the one who left scars on you when you could have been whole, and you simply managed to survive despite that.

I couldn’t say a word because my crying wouldn’t stop. I couldn’t do anything. My vision was blurred, and my ears were filled with nothing but the sound of my own pathetic sobbing. Even when I am with Gi Seoin, I am isolated. This was the kind of ending I had to choose.

Gi Seoin remained silent for a long while before starting the car. He drove, and I continuously shed tears. It would have been nice if this were a breakup where I could at least joke that it felt like a cheap soap opera.

When I finally managed to open my swollen eyes, a familiar landscape came into view. It was the neighborhood where I live. I felt as if I were returning from a very long journey.

I opened the car door. And… I looked back at Gi Seoin.

“I’m going.”

Be well, thank you for everything, and I’m sorry.

Those words got stuck in my chest. In the end, I couldn’t deliver them. I wanted to be a slightly worse person to Gi Seoin. So that he could get completely sick of me and leave for good.

I sincerely hoped that this was the end.

The fact that I wish for an end with Gi Seoin is cruel. That must be why it is this sad.

Gi Seoin did not hold onto me as I left. I kept my neck stiff for fear that I might reflexively look back. It felt as if I had used all my strength just for that, and even opening the front door was a struggle. While taking off my shoes, I even thought about just collapsing and sleeping right there since I had no energy left to reach my room. My head throbbed as if it were breaking, perhaps because I had cried for too long.

Maybe that was why. I saw a hallucination.

Someone is in the living room.

“Ah, damn it… I’ve been caught.”

I realized the moment I heard that voice that it wasn’t a hallucination.

“I got caught.”

A pitch-black shadow stepped across the floorboards, walking toward me. I backed away. The intruder, passing through the living room, pulled a kitchen knife from the kitchen.

I backed up a few more steps. My shoes got caught on my feet. The guy gets closer. There was no more room to retreat. A few steps more and he… My back hit the front door. The kitchen knife flashed.

I desperately fumbled with my hand to unlock the door lock. The moment the front door was pushed by my back and opened instantly, I lost my balance and fell. The knife swung by the intruder touched near my feet and then flew through the air again. There was no time to dodge.

“Ugh…!”

The intruder’s wrist was in my hands, and the knife he was holding was plunged into my shoulder.

“Eek!”

That wasn’t the scream I let out.

Gi Seoin, appearing out of nowhere, grabbed the intruder by the hair and slammed him down. He kicked the sprawled-out intruder without a moment’s hesitation. The intruder tried to resist by waving his arms, but the intensity of the violence only grew stronger.

It was a sight I had seen before.

The first time turned into something that never happened, but it would be difficult for it to be so a second time. I had to stop him.

But my body wouldn’t listen. Half of the blade was still stuck in my shoulder, and my ankle was pouring out blood through a gaping wound. I thought I had dodged the knife when I fell at the front door, but I had been mistaken.

…I was clearly looking at Gi Seoin, I had to stop him, but my vision was filled only with the pitch-black sky. The thought that it might not be the sky was my final conscious thought.

I feel like I’ve woken up after drinking heavily and collapsing into sleep. My throat felt as if it were burning. I should get up and go drink some water… However, the moment I tried to raise my body, I realized that it wasn’t alcohol that had knocked me out.

“…Patient, can you see me? If you can see and hear me, please move your eyes to the right. Good, you did well. This time to the left, yes, and blink once. Yes, good.”

Only after moving exactly as the doctor ordered, like a puppet, and answering a few more questions, was I able to hear properly about my condition.

They said they performed suturing surgery on my shoulder and ankle while I was asleep. However, they said a real problem remained. They said they would do additional tests tomorrow and set a surgery schedule. Judging by the atmosphere, it didn’t seem like a simple surgery.

Even without seeing myself, I knew that my appearance with my shoulder and ankle bound was quite ridiculous. Even a hollow laugh came out of me. I experienced firsthand the law that when a person is faced with a baffling situation for which there is no answer, laughter comes out instead.

Then suddenly, I thought of Gi Seoin and the laughter stopped.

Before I could be covered in worry or anxiety, the hospital room door opened and Gi Seoin appeared. At this point, I even began to imagine that I was just playing along with a play he had orchestrated.

Gi Seoin approached quietly and sat in the chair next to the bed. I couldn’t move my head as I pleased, perhaps because my shoulder had been stabbed, so I only turned my eyes to look at him.

“What happened?”

“For now…”

Gi Seoin meticulously straightened and covered me with the blanket that had been sprawled over my body.

“Don’t think about anything and just rest.”

“Who was that person? Did you go to the police station?”

The guy looked surprised by my question, as if he thought I might have developed amnesia.

“Don’t worry. I remember everything.”

Looking at him with side-glances made my eyes stiff, so I looked up at the ceiling. Gi Seoin’s presence was delivered as vividly as if I were looking at him.

“I went to the police station. Once you’re stable, they’ll come to do a victim interview. I’ll accompany you as your lawyer.”

“Does a victim need a lawyer too? And are you… really okay? You hit that person.”

“I’m okay.”

I decided to believe that answer exactly as it was. He must have mobilized every weapon he could present within legal bounds. Gi Seoin will really be fine.

I felt like if I didn’t believe that, I would want to abandon myself.

No matter how much I try to keep Gi Seoin away, he approaches, and in the end, he gets entangled in a terrible incident because of me. So only the conclusion that I should disappear comes to mind. To keep from throwing myself away, I had no choice but to believe Gi Seoin’s words.

So Gi Seoin will be fine, and since I became a patient overnight but didn’t die, I was fine. Then there was one person left.

“Ah, damn it… I’ve been caught.”

I had an illusion that the glinting light in those eyes was looking back at me again. I closed my eyes tight and opened them. Cold sweat instantly soaked my spine.

I had felt a presence in the house for some time. On the day I found a bread bag I hadn’t eaten in the trash can, I had even been certain that the owner of the presence, which I had brushed off as a delusion, would be Gi Seoin.

I hadn’t even guessed that someone would break into a house that had nothing to steal.

“Who was that person… really?”

When I asked again, Gi Seoin answered immediately.

“A homeless person.”

The identity of the intruder was a person who didn’t even have a house to lay his body in for a moment. I might have felt pity if he hadn’t gone on a stabbing rampage. But not now.

Gi Seoin explained how the homeless person had sneaked into my house. it was absurdly brief. He simply came in through an open window. When I was at home, he stayed in the boiler room, and when I went out, he came out and roamed around as if it were his own house.

In a neighborhood full of empty houses, thinking that no one would enter my house, which was essentially a ruin, I didn’t lock the windows even if I closed them.

“I got caught.”

Goosebumps break out all over my skin. I could have died.

“…Was he taken into custody?”

“He’s in the holding cell.”

“Can he come back out?”

Gi Seoin shook his head.

“He has a lot of criminal records, including identical prior offenses. He’ll be in for longer than you think.”

“But he’ll come out eventually, won’t he?”

A sharp voice popped out of me without my realizing it. The guy isn’t even here…

“…Sorry.”

“There’s nothing to be sorry about. It’s a situation where it’s natural to be confused.”

I swallowed a sigh. Less than half a day has passed since I told Gi Seoin I would turn away from him completely, yet I am receiving his care. I felt pathetic, and I resented the fact that it was a “situation where it’s natural to be confused.”

“Sleep more.”

Gi Seoin pulled up the blanket that had slid down to my chest again.

Are you going?

For a moment, I almost asked that. I bit the inside of my cheek. Then I asked a different question.

“Did they say I was hurt a lot? How long did they say it would take to heal?”

Gi Seoin, who had been answering every question as if he had prepared them, only stared at me for a while.

“…The shoulder is the problem.”

“The shoulder again.”

A weak, hollow laugh escaped my mouth.

“How much of a problem is it?”

“As the knife went in, the collarbone was fractured. For now, the skin and muscles were sutured in emergency surgery, but the fractured part needs a new surgery. We’ll know more details tomorrow, but you’ll probably have to be hospitalized for about two weeks after the surgery.”

“Two weeks…?”

“The rehabilitation period will be much longer.”

If so, it would be difficult to work at Benwood. Then how am I supposed to pay for living expenses, for the debt? I am sick of this life where I have to worry about money even when my body is broken into pieces.

“Where is my phone?”

First, I intended to inform the Benwood President of this news. Also to Jeon Juseok… Just thinking of that guy’s voice made my head throb, but I needed to at least let out a groan in advance.

However.

“It’s not here.”

“Huh?”

“There was nothing in your pocket when you came to the hospital.”

“That can’t be, ah…”

I might have dropped it while struggling with the intruder. It was troublesome to have lost my phone of all things. For Benwood, I could find the phone number by searching the internet, but Jeon Juseok was the problem.

There was only one way. To ask Gi Seoin to look for it.

But the words simply wouldn’t come out. I felt sorry for asking him for anything more, and even if the intruder had been caught, I felt uneasy about sending him there alone.

“Sleep for now.”

Gi Seoin turned off the hospital room light and turned on the stand next to the bed. Looking at his dark shadow, I gripped the blanket with my good hand.

I am afraid of being alone.

I hid my trembling hands under the blanket.

“Gi Seoin… um, by any chance…”

“I’ll be here, so call me if you need anything.”

Gi Seoin, speaking as if he had read my thoughts, went and sat on the sofa placed away from the bed. Shamelessly, I looked at him and then lowered my heavily closing eyelids.