NTH 40

When Nana opened his eyes, the sun was already high in the sky. The first thing he saw was Jeha placing a wooden tray on the small table beside the bed.

“You’re awake? I was just about to wake you.”

“What time is it?”

“It’s past eleven. I thought you might get a headache and feel drained if you slept too long, so I was going to get you to eat something.”

Nana rubbed his eyes and looked down at the tray. There was a bowl of seaweed soup with beef, a bowl of white rice, and three side dishes neatly arranged.

“I’ll help you get up, so wash your face and drink some water first, then eat slowly.”

“Okay.”

Jeha carefully supported Nana to prevent him from feeling dizzy, as Nana had low blood pressure. Nana moved, practically hanging onto Jeha, and washed his face. Sitting in the chair in front of the table, he took a spoonful of the seaweed soup, and his eyes widened.

“Don’t tell me you made this soup too?”

“I did.”

“My goodness. Why on earth do you need a housekeeper? Are you just too lazy to go to the laundromat?”

“Yes. Eat the side dishes, too.”

“The soup is so absurdly delicious that I’ve sort of lost my confidence. A housekeeper who can’t cook as well as his employer.”

Jeha just smiled faintly without a word. Nana, who had looked sullen for a moment, mixed his rice into the seaweed soup and ate until his cheeks were puffed up, soon recovering his usual brazen demeanor.

“While you’re working at the university, I’ll be watching YoutTube and practicing my cooking, so don’t be too hasty about firing me, okay?”

“I won’t.”

“I’ll make you something truly delicious. You might not think so, but I’m actually quite skilled with my hands.”

“I know.”

“By the way, what kind of greens is this? It’s really good.”

“Pimpinella. If you need more, I’ll bring you some, so eat slowly. You’re going to get an upset stomach.”

“I’ve always eaten this quickly, but I’ve never once gotten an upset stomach. You have to store as much as you can when there’s food, so it’s a gain to eat even a little bit faster. If you eat slowly, you feel full right away and can’t eat a lot.”

“From now on, you don’t have to do that. I’ll feed you until you’re full at least three times a day, so don’t stuff yourself like that all at once. It makes the person watching you anxious.”

“If you’re going to keep nagging me while I’m eating, get out.”

“This is my room, though?”

“Tsk.”

After grumbling for a moment, Nana once again scooped up a spoonful of the beef from the seaweed soup and put it in his mouth. Then, he narrowed his eyes and smiled happily.

Jeha felt a simultaneous sense of guilt and satisfaction at the fact that he was only now feeding a warm meat soup to Nana, who had been so weary and starved until now.

After Nana had eaten his fill, Jeha said to him.

“A doctor will be here in a little while.”

“What? That pervert from yesterday is coming again?”

Nana puffed up his cheeks and pouted, looking displeased. Jeha was dumbfounded.

“It’s someone else. And why is the doctor from yesterday a pervert?”

“He gave me a shot on purpose because he wanted to see my butt.”

“What are you talking about? He gave it to you because it was necessary. Anyway, the person coming today is an oriental medicine doctor.”

“Don’t tell me I have to get my blood drawn again?”

“No. You just have to answer the questions he asks.”

“My fever is gone and I’m fine now, so why do you keep calling doctors. It must cost a lot of money.”

“Don’t worry about things like that.”

A short while later, Chief Jeong really did bring an oriental medicine doctor. The doctor took Nana’s pulse and asked several detailed questions, then finally looked at Jeha and gave a slight nod.

“Chief Jeong-nim, please take Nana to my room and turn on the TV for him.”

At Jeha’s words, Nana’s eyes widened.

“Why? Are you going to talk about something I’m not supposed to hear? Am I terminally ill and only have three months left to live or something?”

“No. It’s because the conversation will be difficult and I think you’ll be bored. Do you want to watch ‘Let’s Go, Explore the Global Village’?”

“I do!”

As Nana followed Chief Jeong into the room, Jeha asked the oriental medicine doctor.

“How does he seem to you?”

The oriental medicine doctor, who had been wearing a benevolent smile the whole time, put on a serious expression.

“It is not good at all. That young man may look fine on the outside, but his insides are a complete mess.”

“How so, specifically.”

“First of all, his pulse is too weak. It’s even weaker than that of an eighty-year-old, to the point where I can barely feel a pulse at his wrist. His blood pressure and body temperature are severely low, and his hands and feet are excessively cold, so he must have suffered greatly every winter.”

“I see.”

“Judging by the sound of his breathing, his lungs are also not in good condition. There is a high possibility that he suffered from a severe case of pneumonia as a child. In cases like this, even a little bit of running can cause extreme shortness of breath and pain.”

Jeha nodded, recalling the time he had first formally encountered Nana, when Nana had coughed up blood while running away from him.

“The herbal medicine prescribed at an oriental clinic primarily functions to supplement energy, blood, and yang energy, but that young man is so severely lacking in all three—energy, blood, and yang—that it will be difficult to see any effect from just one or two batches of medicine. At best, he might improve slightly after consistently taking it for at least half a year.”

Jeha asked the oriental medicine doctor to use the best medicinal herbs available, regardless of the price, to prepare the medicine.

After Chief Jeong and the oriental medicine doctor left, Jeha went into the room where Nana was. He was sprawled lazily against the headboard cushion of the bed, watching TV. Jeha sat on the edge of the bed and stroked Nana’s hair, and he turned his head.

“Are those people from before gone?”

“Yes.”

“Who was that tall mister who kept coming yesterday and today? He was really handsome.”

Jeha was well aware that Chief Jeong was tall and had a neat appearance, but hearing it from Nana’s lips, an inexplicably unpleasant feeling welled up from deep inside his chest.

“It seems you like men who look like that.”

When Jeha spoke in a stiff tone, Nana grinned.

“Hey, that mister is definitely not as handsome as you. When I first saw you, I was sure you must be a celebrity. You know, that guy who advertises water purifiers.”

“It’s not a matter of how I look…”

“I know, I know. You just want to monopolize my attention, right? Handsome guys are always like that. From now on, I won’t look at any other man, even if he’s a grandfather or a newborn baby, and I’ll only look at you. Like this, okay?”

Nana stared intently at Jeha with a fiery gaze, as if lasers were about to shoot out of his eyes. Even though he knew it was a joke, Jeha couldn’t stand the churning in his chest.

He roughly snatched the back of Nana’s head and kissed him.

“Heup, mmh…”

Nana, while bewildered, parted his lips to accept Jeha’s tongue. Though worried about Nana’s quickly shortening breaths and his rapidly rising and falling chest, Jeha could not stop licking his lips.

“Haa, haa…”

“Promise me. That you’ll never go anywhere and will only stay here.”

Having uttered the obsessive line, Jeha, without giving Nana a chance to answer, laid him down on the bed and wrapped his tongue around his, pulling it into his own mouth. After a kiss that lasted so long his lips went numb, Nana, held tightly in Jeha’s arms, answered.

“Hoo…, my house is flooded anyway, so I have nowhere to go. I’ll stay until you get sick of me and kick me out.”

“I’m telling you not to go even if you have a place to go.”

“What place could be better than here? But it’s really strange. I’m a beggar, I’m sickly, and I can’t even do my job as a housekeeper properly. What is it about me that you like so much?”

Jeha tightened his arms around Nana, holding him as if to trap him. Jeha, kissing the nape of his neck, murmured.

“Does there have to be a reason?”

Nana, who had been resting his forehead on Jeha’s chest in silence for a long time, spoke.

“You know.”

“Yes.”

“Until now, just surviving day by day has been so exhausting that I’ve often resented the heavens, wondering why on earth I was born.”

“Yes.”

“But if I had to save up all the luck in my life just to meet you, then I feel like I can understand all the hardships I’ve gone through, or something like that.”

“…”

“Even if I end up going back to my old life on the streets after this, I think I’ll be able to get by just fine with the memory of you holding me so warmly like this.”

Jeha wanted to cut his own heart in half and sew one of the pieces into Nana’s chest.

After that, Nana did not take a single step out of Jeha’s house for a full week. It was as good as Jeha semi-forcibly confining him under the pretext of his health, but Nana himself did not raise any major complaints about the life that was no different from confinement.

Instead, Jeha had Chief Jeong buy and bring whatever food ingredients Nana wanted, and Nana practiced cooking at home while watching YoutTube, preparing dinner for Jeha every evening.

What Nana had said about being skilled with his hands was true. It seemed that he had been unable to cook properly before because he couldn’t afford to eat good food or buy expensive ingredients. Once he was provided with ingredients and cooking tools and given the opportunity to learn, he began to produce reasonably decent food.

Every morning, Jeha wanted to quit his job as a professor. He could not bear to leave Nana at home alone.

During meetings, before lunch, at the moment his lectures ended, just before leaving work, and whenever else he had a spare moment, Jeha sent messages to Nana, and when he had more time, he would call.

Then Nana would answer the phone while warming up his herbal medicine, or taking a bubble bath, or watching cooking videos on YoutTube, or watching ‘Let’s Go, Explore the Global Village’.

“That program is on again?”

“Yeah. There’s a channel that just plays this one continuously.”

“That’s surprising. They must have filmed a lot of it.”

“I heard it’s over 300 episodes? And they’re still filming. The global village is so big, there must be a lot of places to explore.”

Listening to Nana’s voice like that, Jeha found it hard to bear the urge to run to him right away.

“Professor Kwon, are you perhaps dating someone these days?”

One day in October, when the autumn sky was clear, Professor Min Seyeong asked as they were moving together to the restaurant for lunch after a faculty meeting. Jeha was startled on the inside but maintained his usual expressionless face as he answered.

“Do I look like I am?”

“Oh my, is it true? Are you really dating someone?”

Jeha recalled the languid, cat-like posture of Nana wrapping his arms around his neck and begging for a kiss, and smiled silently. Professor Min’s jaw dropped.

“You’ve often had a look on your face lately like someone in love, so it was true.”

Startled by those words, Jeha asked in alarm.

“Pardon? A look like someone in love? Me?”

“Yes. That’s certainly how it looked to me.”