Hospital Visit (1)
“Neoul. H-how should I put this… would it be all right if I imposed on you again this time?”
“Of course.”
“It’s just that I was handing out the reverse-tribute gifts, and it took a bit longer than expected, so I missed the last train….”
“You needn’t explain. It isn’t my home either, after all, so use it as you please and rest at your ease.”
Neoul rode over to Won Hasin’s house with Song Bi-seo, who had come to pick him up.
Even at that late hour, Won Hasin and Dong-dong were still awake. Seated about a meter apart, they were assembling a robot together while watching a drama.
“Hey, you can’t fit it in like that, you hopeless little Mun Dong-dong!”
“What do you mean, you land-fish! My hand, my rules!”
There was a round of kicking, each trying to get in the better blow. At a glance, it looked no different from any other day. And yet Dong-dong, fiddling with the unfinished robot, seemed oddly tense.
“We’re back.”
“Oh, hey! Fishy’s back? And Do-bin too?”
“Y-yes…! Hello! Excuse us…!”
Won Hasin, who bowed at a perfect ninety degrees, scratched his cheek in embarrassment as the memory of himself sniffling and bawling came back to him.
“How’d round three go? Give me some spoilers. Ah, you guys were filming late, so you must be hungry, right? I should check the fridge for—ah!”
Just as he was getting to his feet, rubbing his stomach, a hand suddenly shot out and shoved him flat onto the sofa. Dong-dong, who had rushed over after toppling Won Hasin aside, stood in front of Neoul.
“Pri—! Ah, you…”
Dong-dong had almost reflexively blurted out prince in her haste, but then she spotted Yeo Do-bin and tripped over the end of the word. In any case, that wasn’t what mattered right now.
“What happened to Master Myeong I-dam? He’s leaving the show! Sudden worsening of his health, they said…! Is something seriously wrong with him?”
Dong-dong stamped her feet. Her eyes were full of worry, anxiety, and disappointment. Even her hair, which she usually gathered tightly up high in one neat bundle, had come loose and hung around her like something possessed.
Won Hasin stretched as though nothing in the world could possibly have shoved him down just now, then lazily pushed himself upright. He wore the expression of a man who had meant to lie down in the first place.
Still, he looked a little sheepish, as if even he knew how absurd he was being, and muttered on.
“After the article came out about Myeong I-dam leaving, she’s been worrying nonstop. She doesn’t even sleep properly at night, and she can’t even manage shrimp very well. She can barely force one or two into her mouth per meal. I even bought her king crab as a special treat, and she barely touched it.”
As he headed for the kitchen, Won Hasin shot Dong-dong a sidelong glance.
“See? Normally if someone says ‘our Dong-dong,’ she’d go nuts and screech about who’s ‘ours’ and who isn’t. But she’s not even responding.”
Then he opened the fridge and rummaged around inside.
“Honestly, the kid’s completely out of her mind. I even sacrificed my precious limited-edition Gundam, telling her to stop thinking about Myeong I-dam and just watch some dramas to calm down, right? But then she starts saying the male supporting actor looks like Myeong I-dam! Seriously!”
His muttering had, by now, turned into a full complaint.
Neoul said to Dong-dong, “I do not know the present state of Master Myeong I-dam either.”
Not only Dong-dong, but all of Myeong I-dam’s fans must be in an uproar. Neoul was worried about his condition as well.
Bzzt—
Then Neoul’s smartphone vibrated. There was a message from Myeong I-dam.
Neoul turned the phone around and showed Dong-dong the text.
“Master Myeong I-dam says not to worry.”
Dong-dong, relieved, sank down with a shaky breath. Then, octopuslike, she flopped her way over to the sofa and sprawled out.
“Ohh. Thank goodness…. But what on earth was he sick with?”
“An attempted poisoning?”
“Pardon……?!”
Even Won Hasin, who had been taking ingredients out to make egg fried rice, stared at Neoul in shock.
Neoul ignored them and began slowly typing out a reply with two-finger pecking. Entering text always demanded a great deal of concentration.
While he did that, Yeo Do-bin helped Won Hasin wash the scallions and explained the whole story.
“Oh dear. What a mess. You’ve had a rough time. What are those people at the station doing, anyway? They can’t even manage the water the kids drink properly?”
Won Hasin frowned hard and cursed out the production team.
A little while later, a reply arrived on Neoul’s phone.
As Won Hasin fried the scallions in cooking oil to make scallion oil, a delicious fragrance drifted up. Neoul walked toward the dining table and asked, “Is sending a hospital address and a map while telling me not to come meant as an invitation? Or does he truly mean for me not to come?”
Won Hasin cracked an egg over the scallion oil and began stir-frying the rice as he answered, “It means, ‘If you don’t come visit me in the hospital, then you’re not even human.’”
Oh. But I’m not human in the first place…?
* * *
Neoul ended up going to visit Myeong I-dam in the hospital on the day Idol Travel Episode 9 aired.
“Should I come too?”
Yeo Do-bin asked, but Neoul shook his head. Since Myeong I-dam knew his identity, it seemed better to go alone.
And now that more and more people recognized the Idol Travel contestants, if they went around together there was a real risk of drawing too much attention.
Neoul stopped by a large mart with Song Bi-seo, bought some frozen fish-shaped buns, and got into the car. It was Won Hasin’s lesson that when you visited someone in the hospital, you were supposed to bring fruit, drinks, snacks, or some other little gift.
“……”
Song Bi-seo glanced at the trash bag holding the frozen fish-shaped buns in Neoul’s arms and asked, “Mr. Gal Neoul. Aren’t they cold?”
“Yes. They’re perfectly cool, and quite nice.”
“…Does the patient particularly like frozen fish-shaped buns?”
“I believe he will. They’re delicious.”
“So you don’t know, then. I see….”
When Song Bi-seo hesitated, Neoul looked at him as if wondering why the car had not yet been started.
Song Bi-seo was debating whether he should point out the unusual hospital gift or simply let it be. A flour-based food, of all things, and a frozen one at that, as a present for a patient?
After some agonizing, he finally spoke up.
“May I suggest reconsidering the hospital gift?”
“It is fine. I like this one.”
No, it is not fine. It is not fine at all. You may like it, but it’s not good for the patient, is it?
Song Bi-seo swallowed his discomfort and, in the end, drove to the hospital anyway.
* * *
Myeong I-dam, whom they met in a single-occupancy room, had an IV in his arm and wore a patient gown. He seemed to have lost some weight, looking paler than before. Even his ramen-like curls had gone dry and rough.
The only thing unchanged was the green frog ring on his finger.
“I told you not to come, so why did you come?”
His mouth grumbled with words he didn’t mean, but Myeong I-dam’s face looked strangely pleased, as if he had been bored and was glad for the company.
“Here. Take this.”
“Ow, it’s cold! What is this? Frozen fish-shaped buns?”
No, seriously, what kind of gift was this?
Myeong I-dam stared at Neoul in disbelief.
“Well… there’s a fridge over there, so you can put them in the freezer if you want.”
Neoul nodded with satisfaction and placed the entire bag of hospital gifts into the freezer compartment.
“Actually, I came to deliver a letter.”
“A letter…?”
Myeong I-dam, who had been grumbling, went abruptly quiet at the word letter and blinked. Neoul handed him the letter Dong-dong had written out with painstaking effort, wasting several pretty sheets of paper as she went.
Myeong I-dam accepted it carefully, as if one careless touch might tear the envelope. Then, making sure not to damage it, he opened it gently and took out the letter paper.
The letter had been written on one-sided paper, so Neoul couldn’t see what it said from where he stood.
Myeong I-dam slowly read through Mun Dong-dong’s awkward sentences—the words of someone who, by her own account, was doing fandom for the first time. Then something struck him hard in the heart. His hand, gripping the page, began to shake, and before long he was crying.
“P-paper. Can I have some tissue?”
Neoul found the tissues in the room and handed them over. Myeong I-dam, careful not to let tears fall onto the precious letter paper, buried his face in them and sobbed.
A trembling voice leaked out from between lips swollen and split with injury.
“My vocal cords were paralyzed.”
“……”
“It was terrifying.”
Even so, he kept rereading the letter, careful not to crumple it by mistake. Only after a long while, once he had nearly memorized half the contents, did he return it to the envelope and set it on the nightstand beside the bed.
“The moment I woke up, my throat hurt, my voice wouldn’t come out, I couldn’t even swallow my own spit, and everything was difficult…. I was most afraid that I’d never be able to sing again.”
He had told himself he’d quit it all. That he didn’t want to do anything anymore. That things were already awful, so maybe this had worked out in his favor after all. He had tried to talk himself into feeling triumphant, but the truth was nothing like that. He had felt wronged, terrified, furious.
Why should I be the one to drop out? Why the hell are these weak-ass vocal cords collapsing over something like that?
What if the paralysis still hasn’t gone away after six months? What if a year passes? What if I have to live like this forever?
What if Idol Travel was my last chance? What if I never get another opportunity like this, and no one wants to hear me sing anymore?
Kim Ji-rok, you son of a bitch. Fuck. Fuck. Fucking shit.
Consumed by stress to the point that his head burned and his stomach hurt, he had cursed Kim Ji-rok, damned him, and then berated himself for being so stupid. Day by day, it had all passed like hell.
“Fortunately, it came back quickly. But every time I fall asleep, I keep having nightmares that my voice won’t come back.”
When he woke up drenched in cold sweat and forced his voice out as gently as possible so as not to aggravate his tender vocal cords, the relief would come crashing over him the instant he realized the returning voice meant reality, and the absent one meant a dream.
“I thought I had given up, but maybe I didn’t really want to quit after all.”
Myeong I-dam lowered his head. But it was already too late to turn back. He had missed the round-three stage, and the articles saying he had dropped out of Idol Travel had already been flooding in for a long time.
After crying his eyes out and finally calming down, Myeong I-dam looked toward the envelope and asked, “I’m so grateful… but why does this person like me? I believe it isn’t a lie anymore, but… I still don’t understand.”
Myeong I-dam’s expression was uncertain.
“Ah. I just came from asking her about that, actually.”
Before coming to the hospital, Neoul had asked Dong-dong, who had handed him the letter, why she liked Myeong I-dam.
— Mun Dong-dong. I’m no less handsome than anyone else, and I performed on stage quite excellently as well. Why is it that the participant you support most is Master Myeong I-dam?
One pick. In a survival program where only the handful of contestants chosen by more people could debut, the single participant a viewer picked out and chose for themselves.
He was truly curious.
Why did viewers each make different choices? By what reasons did they decide which contestant they wanted to support?