The Switched Baby
He was the man who had caught her eye from the moment she stepped out of the elevator.
The multicolored silk pouch hanging from his waist certainly stood out, but even that seemed like a mere personal flair next to his porcelain-white skin and clean-cut features.
And he seemed subtly aware of her, the way he kept glancing over—exactly the look of a man waiting for the right moment to ask for a phone number.
He looked like he had money, too…
His clothes were ordinary enough, yet the air around him was anything but. That faintly cool, refined presence felt precisely like the son of a wealthy household.
You know the type. The ones who never need to flaunt their wealth; it simply radiates from them.
Kim Ji-ae was certain the man in front of her was exactly that sort.
Still, if he asked for her number, she’d have to brush him off once first.
“Two months left now, right?”
Her colleague asked as if the thought had just struck her, glancing at Kim Ji-ae.
“Yeah. Just tough it out two more months, then I’m gone without looking back.”
Kids were truly the worst. All that eating, pooping, and screaming—what even was that?
It was so bad that even after work the infants’ piercing wails still rang in her ears.
Seriously. So damn annoying.
“I’m jealous. I want to go to Europe too…”
“You should go while you can. Honestly, if not now while we’re on standby, you won’t get another chance. Once you’re in a big hospital you won’t have the time even if you want to.”
“Forget it. Too many places I need to pour money into.”
“Same here. But this is a gift to myself for all the hard work. Who knows how much more grinding is waiting for me.”
Kim Ji-ae was talking with her colleagues, yet every nerve was trained on the man.
Come on. Hurry up and ask for my number already.
“We need to wait here a little. My younger sibling still has to come out.”
“Of course. Then shall we head over to the sofas…”
The man looked ready to leave with the older woman.
What…? I was wrong?
Just as she was about to swallow a sigh at the thought of getting ahead of herself, the man suddenly stopped walking and looked straight at her.
“…!”
She’d been stealing glances when their eyes properly locked. Embarrassed, she tried to whip her head away—but she couldn’t.
W-what the hell…
Because she suddenly felt as if she had been reduced to an infinitely pathetic little insect, cast before some vast, overwhelming presence.
She wanted to tear her gaze free of the incomprehensible feeling, yet her body refused to obey.
Mere minutes ago she had been hoping he would walk over and speak to her. Now she simply wanted him gone from her sight.
“Excuse me.”
But the man closed the distance and spoke anyway, never taking his eyes off her as though nothing else existed.
“…Y-yes?”
Alarm bells blared instinctively inside her skull. Sensing the ominous weight, she carefully parted her lips.
“The baby switch. Are you going to keep quiet about it forever?”
“…!”
Kim Ji-ae could not breathe. She had never imagined the most lethal secret she desperately wanted buried would spill from this man’s mouth.
“H-huuh… hah…”
“What were you planning to do later?”
He tossed the words out again, indifferent.
“…”
This was no mere suspicion. His tone said he knew exactly what she had done wrong.
No. No. No!
Absolutely not!
This fact could never come to light. If it did, her career as a nurse would be finished before it even began.
It might be a cowardly excuse, but… three days had already passed since the incident. Yet the parents hadn’t so much as called, as if they still didn’t realize their babies had been switched.
If they had noticed, the entire place would have exploded by now.
How… How did he know?!
In that chaos no one could have grasped the situation. Because of that she had believed it would stay buried forever so long as she alone kept her mouth shut.
“Um… What are you talking about?”
The colleague beside her stood up with a puzzled look.
Thud!
Kim Ji-ae seized her colleague’s wrist, clinging to her fraying sanity.
No. There’s still… still a chance.
No matter how she racked her brains, there was no way this man could know about that day’s mistake.
He wasn’t even a coworker—he was a complete stranger. An outsider who hadn’t been at the scene had no reason to know the secret.
Right.
“A baby… was switched…?”
Kim Ji-ae forced the words out as if wringing them from her throat.
If I just deny it well, I can get through this.
Eyes stabbed at her from every direction, but there was still a chance to contain it.
“What on earth do you mean… Haha…”
The man tilted his head and asked,
“Hmm. How do you plan to handle the aftermath if you keep this up?”
“…What?”
Kim Ji-ae rolled her eyes once and opened her mouth.
“I don’t know why you’re suddenly acting like this, but… th-this is problematic.”
The medical personnel protection notice on the wall caught her eye. She glanced at it and added,
“If you keep this up I’ll call security. Assaulting or threatening a medical professional…”
The man cut her off cleanly.
“You tore the name tags off on your own, and that’s what caused this whole mess.”
“Security, please—”
“Jeong Min-gyu.”
“…!”
The moment the three syllables of the child switched by her own mistake burst from the man’s mouth—
“Still going to claim you don’t know?”
Kim Ji-ae knew then. The carefully built tower she had desperately stacked all this time had completely collapsed.
A baby had been switched. Even the mere suspicion of such a thing was enough to throw a postpartum care center into total chaos.
It was the sort of incident that could completely destroy not only one child’s life but the lives of every family involved.
“A baby was switched?”
“Yeah!! The whole place downstairs is going nuts right now. I’ve never seen that kind nursing director scream her head off like that before!”
“The nursing director…?”
She was the woman who always stayed kind and smiling even in the busiest moments. The fact that she had raised her voice was more than enough to shock the new mothers.
“Exactly! The families are threatening lawsuits and flipping the place upside down. The nurse is on her knees bawling and begging for forgiveness, and I wouldn’t let her off either.”
“Isn’t that obvious? Everyone’s eyes have gone bloodshot. If it were me I’d have grabbed her by the hair already. Who lets that slide?”
“And after doing something like that she was going to skip off to Europe with a clear conscience. What a complete psycho, right?”
Everywhere people were talking about the switched baby at the care center. And the name of the man who had exposed it—Park Su-hwan—was also on everyone’s lips.
“Is that actually true? Honestly, how does a mother mix up her own kid’s face? Not that I’m defending the nurse or anything.”
“Newborns are different. They all look alike. She said she was about to move one somewhere else and messed up.”
“Whoa…”
“Want to know the even crazier part? That shaman Park who came here not only said a baby had been switched—he even got the name right. That pretty much settles it, doesn’t it? His spiritual power is no joke.”
“For real? Hasn’t he only recently received the gods? I want to see him too. Has he left already? Tell me he hasn’t.”
“He was on the fourth floor earlier… Not sure about now. Hang on, I’ll ask one of the other moms.”
Because he had precisely named the rookie nurse’s mistake of trying to hide it forever, and because he had spoken the three syllables of the switched child’s name—
“Um… Could I ask you for a reading sometime?”
“May I request one as well?”
The older woman holding a fruit juice approached with an awkward look. The people behind her chimed in as well.
Park Su-hwan swallowed a sigh at the sight of them and spoke. He was a man who always stayed careful, terrified that the Grim Reapers might learn his name.
That was how cautious he was—so cautious that he even asked the people he warned through the ledger not to mention his shrine.
“I’m sorry, but that would be a little difficult. I only give readings on the purest of days…”
Park Su-hwan let the words trail off with an apologetic expression. Inside, however, he was thoroughly unsettled.
A baby was switched…
His mouth itched and twitched of its own accord; he never knew what would come out until the words left him. That was why even Park Su-hwan himself could never predict what he was about to say.
“Then could we at least get the location of your shrine?”
“I’m afraid I must decline that as well. The spirits only reveal destinies to those who already share a fated connection.”
“Ahh…”
He had lost count of how many times this had happened. He also wondered how everyone kept finding out he was sitting in this lounge.
At his firm refusal the people voiced their disappointment and eventually drifted away.
“Haa…”
“Young man, you really did something huge. How could anyone take the name tags off early just to finish the work faster?”
That was right. Normally, when a family checked out, the nurse was supposed to show them in person that the baby had not been switched and only then remove the name tags.
But the nurse in question—Kim Ji-ae—had completely ignored the procedure while rushing through her work, and that was how the disaster had happened.
“I mean… It’s just ridiculous. Did you see how wide she opened her eyes at first, claiming she hadn’t done it? She should have been begging on her knees already.”
The landlady auntie let out a hollow laugh as she recalled the girl who had still been talking back so brazenly.
The reason the situation had exploded so quickly was largely thanks to her. Park Su-hwan had already correctly predicted her younger sibling’s death, so she trusted every word that came out of his mouth without a shred of doubt.
That was why she had pressed Kim Ji-ae, insisting that covering up the switched baby was the absolute truth.
In the end the girl who had been stubbornly holding out broke down crying and confessed her crime.
“You’re really something. Amazing, our young man!”
“I’m thinking of switching care centers myself.”
Kang Dong-hyun cut in from the side.
In this day and age a baby being switched at a postpartum care center was extremely rare, so there was no need for excessive fear. But the fact that someone had tried to cover it up after it happened was another matter entirely.
Because of that, talk of moving to other centers was already spreading among the mothers.
“I’ll look into it. Let’s move somewhere else too. Honestly, how can anyone leave their baby here after this?”
“Right. She did that and still claimed she was too busy to notice? That means a baby could get switched and no one would even know.”
This place had built a reputation among mothers for solid facilities at a reasonable price. Because it was always packed without a moment’s rest, the fallout was even greater.
“I’m sorry… for causing such a scene.”
He had only come to see Kang Dong-hyun’s child, never dreaming he would get swept up in a disaster this large. That did not mean he regretted what he had done.
He had without question saved the lives of two children and their entire families.
The older woman shook her head with a kind face.
“Nonsense. It was for the best. Something truly terrible almost happened.”
“You really saved everyone, young man.”
The sidelong glances were sharp. Every single one of them wanted him to read their fortunes and tell them their futures.
I should get home before an even bigger scene breaks out here.
“I’ll come again another time.”
“Already…?”
“Today isn’t the only day, right?”
With a light shrug Park Su-hwan rose from his seat. Ignoring the gazes that followed him, he headed straight home.
“Oh!”
And there, lingering in front of his shrine, he ran into a child—the very same boy who had nearly lost his grandmother in a gas explosion.