Just A Friend

#53

The resentment heard over the phone turned into rage and poured out onto Kang Jihan. Kang Jihan stared at Park Gyuhyeon without blinking. Feeling like one of his ears still wasn’t hearing well, he asked again.

“What are you talking about?”

“Damn it, the cigarette smell really… That’s not all. Did you even know Nam Seonwoo was a non-smoker? You probably didn’t. You probably didn’t know that Nam Seonwoo hates the smell of cigarettes so much he shudders at it!”

No. Nam Seonwoo had said it. “Strangely, I like the smell of the cigarettes you smoke.” That’s why he only smoked the same brand as Kang Jihan. Whenever Kang Jihan went out to smoke, Nam Seonwoo always followed and smoked with him.

“How convenient it must have been for you, having this pushover adjust everything because he liked you, huh? After using him for so long, I thought you’d finally backed off, but what? You won’t break up? What bullshit. If you had any conscience, you shouldn’t even contact him. Are you even human?”

That’s why he had given Nam Seonwoo a lighter as a gift once. Nam Seonwoo carried it with him every day. He had seen it with his own eyes. How preciously Nam Seonwoo carried it around.

“How can you be his guardian when you don’t even know such basic things? That’s why I gritted my teeth and stopped it. I desperately stopped his parents from trying to contact you! I told them you weren’t qualified!”

From the start, he couldn’t make sense of what Park Gyuhyeon was saying. About cigarettes, accidents, and what was this about being a guardian? None of it made any sense.

“That day, there was an accident in front of your hospital, right? He was probably on his way back from taking care of you again. Yes, it’s because of you. You’re as good as the one who made Seonwoo like this! You murderer!”

Park Gyuhyeon threw the phone he was holding. As if that wasn’t enough, he threw stones from the ground, and when he ran out of stones, he scraped up dirt from the flowerbed and threw it.

Kang Jihan could only stand there blankly in front of the things Park Gyuhyeon was throwing. The ringing in his ears grew louder than before. Mixed with the thumping heartbeat, it crashed over him like a roar. Even amidst all this, the words “you murderer” pierced right through him.

Murder?

Why?

Why is Nam Seonwoo dead?

These fragmented thoughts were the first to cross his mind.

Kang Jihan tried to piece together the puzzle from the disjointed words Park Gyuhyeon was spewing. Traffic accident, intensive care unit, head injury, skull, surgery, unconscious… As the words increasingly cast a shadow of death, he felt his ears might go numb again, but he strained his eyes and endured.

His bloodshot eyes looked behind Park Gyuhyeon. The building Park Gyuhyeon seemed to have come from was a hospital. Not a funeral home.

Just that fact alone was enough to make his legs move.

His legs quickly ran towards the hospital. While his head remained frozen in place, his body shot forward as if thrown somewhere. In the rapidly changing scenery around him, he was looking for only one thing.

Nam Seonwoo. He had to see Nam Seonwoo with his own eyes. Park Gyuhyeon had always been trying to separate Nam Seonwoo and him. So he could be telling outrageous lies. That’s why he had to see for himself.

In front of the crowded hospital room, his eyes scanning the name plates finally stopped at one place.

“Room 708: Nam Seonwoo”

Despite having searched for that name so desperately, for some reason, his body froze stiff like ice.

In front of the tightly closed hospital room, his hand resting on the doorknob hesitated for a moment. He wasn’t sure if he wanted Nam Seonwoo to be inside or not. But what was certain was that he had to see Nam Seonwoo right away.

Kang Jihan opened the door. As soon as he entered that pure white space, the ringing that had been floating in his head suddenly stopped.

He was there. Nam Seonwoo.

He approached the bed, holding his breath. Nam Seonwoo looked as if he was in a deep sleep. Kang Jihan couldn’t take his eyes off the pale face for even a second. He felt that if he looked away for even a moment, the presence before him might disappear.

As if entranced, he raised his hand. His fingertips, groping the air, stopped just below the transparent tube inserted in Nam Seonwoo’s nose. Forgetting to breathe, he focused all his nerves on those fingertips, and soon felt a faint breath tickling his skin.

Only then did Kang Jihan exhale the breath he had been holding. He could see Nam Seonwoo’s chest moving slightly up and down. He was alive. As expected, what Park Gyuhyeon had said was a lie. Nam Seonwoo was clearly breathing and alive.

He gently caressed the cheek that fit in one hand. It wasn’t an illusion. This sensation touching his skin definitely had form. But why…

“Nam Seonwoo.”

Why was he so thin?

His already slim body seemed to show bones. All the various devices connected to different parts of his body made him look even more frail.

His gaze followed the lines connected to Nam Seonwoo’s body. Between the drip, drip, drip sounds from the IV stand, the words Park Gyuhyeon had spilled out seemed to flash by one by one.

“…Nam Seonwoo.”

Nam Seonwoo was a light sleeper. Even if Kang Jihan tossed just a little, he would rub his drowsy eyes and ask, “Can’t sleep?” But why wasn’t he opening his eyes now? Why wasn’t he yawning with his small mouth open, or speaking in a sleepy voice?

Nam Seonwoo seemed like someone who couldn’t hear anything. Even though he was right in front of him and could be touched, it felt like some vast wall had formed between them. Despite the inexplicable anxiety, all he could do was call out to him.

Just then, a familiar voice was heard from behind.

“Is it Gyuhyeon?”

Kang Jihan took his hand off Nam Seonwoo as if caught stealing. When he turned around and met eyes with the middle-aged woman, he couldn’t move an inch.

“…You.”

It was Nam Seonwoo’s birth mother, Park Jayoung.

“Why are you here?”

Her face, which used to openly reflect her straightforward personality, now looked haggard like a withered plant. The corners of her mouth, which used to smile like Nam Seonwoo, trembled with intense sarcasm.

About a decade ago, he had received a similar look from her.

It was during college. As they naturally had less time together after entering medical school, Nam Seonwoo suggested living together. By then, Kang Jihan had already thought about breaking up with Nam Seonwoo, so he tried to refuse. But he couldn’t. After spending a week without seeing Nam Seonwoo all day, he had no choice but to accept the proposal.

Even though he knew it was contradictory, he couldn’t help it. He was in his early twenties then, and breaking up still felt like something for the future. Even when the 4 years of medical school passed and he reached the age where he started hearing about marriage from his peers, that ‘excuse’ continued.

Then one day, Nam Seonwoo’s parents visited their home. It happened to be right after they had showered together, and they were wearing separate tops and bottoms of their pajamas. So the eyes of the parents questioning their relationship were filled with certainty.

It was that kind of look then too. Blame and reproach, contempt and shock. Under that gaze mixed with all those emotions, he couldn’t raise his head, feeling like a criminal. It was worse because he had overheard a phone conversation once. It felt like her gaze was demanding how he could shamelessly stay by Nam Seonwoo’s side after hearing all that.

But Nam Seonwoo wasn’t like that. The small back that stood in front of him faced his parents with a straight spine. He fiercely shot back that yes, they were lovers, and told them not to look at Kang Jihan like that.

Nam Seonwoo, who had said he was going to talk with his parents for a bit, came home that evening with a very swollen face. He smiled nonchalantly and said he had been disowned. He reassured Kang Jihan, saying not to worry, that no parent can win against their child.

The next day, Kang Jihan went to see Nam Seonwoo’s parents. He knelt on both knees and begged for forgiveness. He pleaded with them not to cut ties with Nam Seonwoo. It was because he had seen Nam Seonwoo crying secretly the night before.

‘Then, are you going to break up?’

Yes. That would have been the answer to give. Because it was true that he would break up with Nam Seonwoo, it was just a matter of timing. But that short and simple answer didn’t come out easily. So he gave a similar answer. Saying “I won’t cause you any concern” implied that he would eventually return their son to his original place.

Although it probably wasn’t the answer they wanted, Nam Seonwoo’s parents listened silently. Then, after a long while, they asked various questions. Where they met, what he was doing now, what his parents were like.

As he answered each of these questions one by one, Kang Jihan realized once again. That all he had was the empty title of being a medical student. Even that was no different from something Nam Seonwoo had created for him.

He was an entity ridiculously inadequate to be by Nam Seonwoo’s side. He didn’t have a harmonious family, nor the smile that bloomed without a shadow because of it, nor the inherent warmth. Although Nam Seonwoo’s parents didn’t say anything about it, that fact stung his heart like an awl.

After that day, he whipped himself crazy. He poured everything into ensuring there would be no delay from completing his specialist training to opening his own practice right away. His obsession with breaking free from his birth father’s influence had long since faded. He raced to establish himself so that he could be, even for a moment, an existence not to be ashamed of by Nam Seonwoo’s side.

He was so focused on all of that that he didn’t realize how inconsistent it all was in a situation premised on breaking up.

Still, he didn’t forget to visit Nam Seonwoo’s parents. He went to pay his respects on behalf of Nam Seonwoo, who didn’t go home even on holidays, and conveyed news about Nam Seonwoo that they might not have heard.

Perhaps it wasn’t a futile effort, as one day Nam Seonwoo and his parents started communicating again. He still vividly remembered Nam Seonwoo’s eyes turning red the day his mother first sent side dishes.

He had always thought Nam Seonwoo’s mother, in particular, resembled Nam Seonwoo. Although her words were blunt, she was a warm and rational person. When she occasionally invited them over, she welcomed them with a warm smile that was just like Nam Seonwoo’s.

“You, you… How dare you come in here? You didn’t show your face when the child was dying, and now you-!”

That mother, who had been like that, was now screaming, having lost her reason.