이 포스팅은 쿠팡 파트너스 활동의 일환으로, 이에 따른 일정액의 수수료를 제공받습니다.
# Chapter 217: Kang Min-jun’s Silence
When Do-hyun entered, Sea-a was counting her fingers.
One, two, three, four, five. And again. Left hand. One, two, three, four, five. This gesture was no longer conscious. Like her heart beating, like breathing, it had become something that repeated automatically. Counting fingers. Confirming that she still existed.
The hospital room door closed. The sound of Do-hyun entering. His footsteps were fast and irregular. Sea-a stopped counting her fingers and lifted her head.
Do-hyun’s face was pale. Impossibly so for a seventeen-year-old. As if he’d been awake all night. Or perhaps he really had been. Since their mother woke up, Do-hyun didn’t seem to have slept properly once.
“Noona.”
Do-hyun spoke. His voice was trembling.
Sea-a didn’t answer. Instead, she pointed to the chair beside the bed. Where Kang Ryu had been sitting. He’d left minutes ago, releasing their mother’s hand slowly, carefully, as if he might shatter into pieces.
Do-hyun sat down. He looked at Sea-a. There was something in his eyes. Questions. Anger. Or fear. Probably all of it mixed together.
“What did Mom say?”
Do-hyun asked.
“Everything.”
Sea-a answered.
Silence filled the room. The fluorescent light illuminated it coldly, without mercy. Sea-a looked at their mother. She still had her eyes open, staring at the ceiling as if someone else existed above it.
“Kang Min-jun?”
Do-hyun asked.
“Yes.”
“That’s… our father’s name?”
Sea-a didn’t answer. There was no need. Do-hyun already knew. He’d known before their mother told him. These past few days, he’d been searching for something, picking up and putting down his phone repeatedly. Looking something up.
“The CEO of JYA?”
“Yes.”
“And Kang Ryu is…”
Do-hyun trailed off, as if completing that sentence would shatter the world.
“Our older brother.”
Sea-a finished for him.
Do-hyun’s body slumped in the chair as if someone had pushed him. He stared at the ceiling, in the same direction as their mother, as if it were the only refuge available.
“How long…?”
Do-hyun asked.
“Since Dad met Mom.”
Sea-a answered.
“So… before we were even born?”
“Yes.”
Do-hyun was silent for a while. He simply stared at the ceiling. Sea-a watched her younger brother. Traces of boyhood still clung to his face, but they were fading rapidly now, like sand slipping through an hourglass. Or like someone was stealing them away.
“What about Mom?”
Do-hyun asked.
“What do you mean?”
“Does she still… feel something for Kang Min-jun?”
Do-hyun couldn’t finish the thought.
Sea-a couldn’t answer either. It was a question even she didn’t know the answer to. What did their mother feel about Kang Min-jun? Was it love, hatred, both, or something else entirely?
The monitor in the room beeped. Their mother’s blood pressure had risen. Sea-a and Do-hyun both looked up at once. Their mother still stared at the ceiling, but her fingers were moving. As if she were trying to play piano. Or press something down.
“Where’s Kang Ryu?”
Do-hyun asked.
“He left. A few minutes ago.”
“Where?”
“I don’t know.”
Sea-a answered. It wasn’t a lie. She genuinely didn’t know where Kang Ryu had gone, why, or when he’d return.
Do-hyun stood up, pushing his chair back with a scrape. The sound echoed through the hospital room.
“I need to leave too.”
Do-hyun said.
“Where?”
“Hagwon. No, school. No, just… I need to get out of here.”
Do-hyun’s voice was breaking. Sea-a watched her brother’s back as he moved toward the door, and she realized it was trembling.
“Do-hyun.”
Sea-a called out.
Do-hyun stopped, gripping the handle, but didn’t turn around.
“I’m… sorry.”
Sea-a said.
Do-hyun opened the door but didn’t leave. He just held it open. Sounds from the hallway drifted in. Footsteps. Voices. An ordinary hospital morning.
“Are you sorry for what you did?”
Do-hyun asked without turning.
“Or are you just saying sorry to me?”
He asked again.
“Both.”
Sea-a answered.
Do-hyun closed the door slowly, carefully, as if trying not to break anything. Then he was gone. Into the hallway, down the stairs, out of the hospital. Out of this world.
Sea-a didn’t hear her brother leave, but she felt it. Like a piece of herself walking away. Or like she was breaking further.
Their mother moved on the bed, as if she’d felt Do-hyun’s departure.
“Sea-a.”
Their mother spoke for the first time, calling Sea-a by name.
Sea-a looked at her mother.
“I have something I need to do for you.”
Her mother said.
“What?”
Sea-a asked.
“Let you go.”
Her mother answered.
The words hung in the air. Let you go. Sea-a thought about what it meant. Was it love? Was it abandonment?
“You need to go to Kang Min-jun.”
Her mother said.
“What?”
Sea-a asked.
“To Kang Min-jun. And you need to ask him something. Why he was afraid of me. And why you… existed but didn’t.”
Her mother’s voice was growing weaker, as if she’d spent all her energy saying these words.
“Mom…”
Sea-a said.
“I can’t say any more. I’ve told you everything. Now you have to find your own answers.”
Her mother closed her eyes slowly, as if it might be the last time.
Sea-a took her mother’s hand. It was warm. Evidence of life. But how many secrets and how much pain were contained within that hand? Sea-a didn’t want to let go. But her mother was already somewhere else. In the past. In an underground club near Gangnam Station. On a stage. In a place where her voice could make the world weep.
The fluorescent light in the hospital room continued to buzz.
Sea-a didn’t look for Kang Ryu. Instead, she went down to the hospital basement café. It was always quiet there. Especially around eleven in the morning. Some people were upstairs, some were outside, some were in deeper places still. Sea-a sat in a corner of the café, by a window that looked out on nothing but the basement wall, where almost no sunlight entered.
She didn’t drink coffee. She drank water. Lukewarm water. Water with no taste. That was good. Water that asked nothing of her.
Sea-a’s phone rang. An unknown number. At first, she didn’t want to answer. But it rang twice. Then three times.
“Hello?”
Sea-a answered.
“Is this Na Sea-a?”
A man’s voice. Low, clear, authoritative.
“Yes.”
Sea-a answered.
“This is Kang Min-jun.”
The man said.
Sea-a’s fingers trembled. She set down the water glass. A little water spilled. A voice came through her ear—a man she should call father, but wasn’t. Not legally, not morally, not in any way.
“I…”
Sea-a tried to speak, but the words wouldn’t come.
“I received a call from your mother. She woke up at the hospital.”
Kang Min-jun said.
“Yes.”
Sea-a answered.
“And you’ve learned about my existence.”
Kang Min-jun said.
“Yes.”
Sea-a answered again.
“Where are you right now?”
Kang Min-jun asked.
“At the hospital.”
Sea-a answered.
“May I come?”
Kang Min-jun asked.
Sea-a couldn’t answer that. The question was impossible to respond to. Should Kang Min-jun come? Who decided that? Her mother? Kang Ryu? Herself?
“I’m coming.”
Kang Min-jun said.
The call ended.
Sea-a set down her phone. Her fingers continued to tremble. One, two, three, four, five. And again. Left hand. One, two, three, four, five.
The café was otherwise empty. Just Sea-a and the staff member behind the counter. That employee didn’t look at Sea-a. Or chose not to. Witnessing someone’s collapse was uncomfortable.
Sea-a drank her water again. Lukewarm water. Water that asked nothing of her.
Kang Min-jun arrived forty minutes later.
Sea-a had left the café and was waiting at the hospital entrance. The sunlight was there. November sunlight. Not warm, but present. Sea-a felt it on her skin, as if it were proof that she was still alive.
A black car pulled up. An expensive one. Sea-a didn’t look at the license plate. But she watched the man who got out.
He was in his early fifties. Tall, with a solid build, and his clothes were expensive. But what struck her most was his face. Sea-a had never seen it before. Yet she recognized it. Kang Ryu’s face. Kang Ryu’s eyes. Kang Ryu’s mouth. Everything was the same. Only time had changed it.
Kang Min-jun approached Sea-a.
“Na Sea-a.”
He said.
“Yes.”
Sea-a answered.
“You don’t look like me.”
Kang Min-jun said.
Sea-a didn’t answer.
“You look like your mother. That’s fortunate.”
Kang Min-jun said.
Sea-a didn’t understand what he meant. Fortunate. That word. Fortunate how?
“Let’s go inside.”
Kang Min-jun said.
Sea-a followed. Into the hospital. To the elevator. Up to the floor where the patient rooms were.
In front of her mother’s hospital room door, Kang Min-jun stopped.
He didn’t grasp the handle. He only looked at it. As if it were a door to another world.
“When I met that woman, I was…”
Kang Min-jun began speaking.
“What?”
Sea-a asked.
“Insane.”
Kang Min-jun answered.
The word hung in the air. Insane. What did that mean? Insane with love? Or just insane?
Kang Min-jun grasped the handle.
The hospital room door opened.
Their mother’s eyes looked at Kang Min-jun. And in those eyes were fourteen days of silence, twenty-four years of secrets, and this present moment—all of it.
Kang Min-jun stepped inside. And stopped.
“Hello.”
He said. As if greeting a stranger.
Their mother didn’t answer. Instead, she lifted her hand. From the bed. The same hand Sea-a had already held.
Kang Min-jun looked at that hand. For a long time. As if hoping it belonged to someone else. As if hoping it had nothing to do with him.
And he approached. Slowly. Carefully. As if the hand were fragile glass.
His fingers met their mother’s.
Sea-a watched. That contact. Twenty-four years in the making. And how it defined her entire existence. If these two hands had never touched, she wouldn’t exist. Because they did touch, she existed.
Whether that was a blessing or a curse, Sea-a still didn’t know.
The fluorescent light in the hospital room continued to buzz.
And Sea-a’s fingers trembled. One, two, three, four, five. And again. That rhythm wouldn’t stop. Perhaps it never would. Like her heartbeat. Like her voice. Like her fire.
Sea-a left the hospital room. Closing the door behind her. Inside were her mother and her father. Not legally, but biologically. And within them was Sea-a. Invisible. But certain. Forever.
The hospital corridor was long.
Sea-a walked it. Meeting no one. Looking for no one. Simply walking.
Kang Ryu’s whereabouts—Sea-a chose not to think about them. Do-hyun’s either.
Instead, Sea-a counted her fingers.
One, two, three, four, five.
And again.
One, two, three, four, five.
And again.