The Hospital of Our Dreams
Smiling Kongdol-i, smiling Geumdal-i, smiling Cha-cha, and smiling Haennim-i, smiling Teun-teun-i...
He could paint them. Of course they could look the same.
They were faces Kwak Suho already knew.
But how were even the wings identical?
No — he could have imagined the wings, too. Even so, the way they're flying is exactly the same. The landscape around them is similar, besides.
The scene in the painting was one that only Lee Jun knew.
How could Kwak Suho possibly have known that image — all of them lifting Lee Jun on their forepaws as they flew?
And yet, looking at this painting, it feels like we're together again.
Gazing at the canvas, it felt as though he had been carried back to that impossibly happy moment, and Lee Jun leaned into it as if he might be drawn straight through the paint. He smiled just as widely as the animals smiling back at him.
Choi Woo-jin, who had been looking at the painting with him, caught the expression on Lee Jun's face, and his eyes lit up.
"Hey, Kwak Suho. Paint another one of these."
"Why? You want one of my paintings too? Well, I did do a pretty good job. I thought your eyes looked suspicious from the moment you saw the one hanging out there, anyway. Fine — if you want it that badly... call me hyung. Then I'll think about it."
Kwak Suho even brought up the painting he had gifted Lee Jun when Mongmong Animal Hospital first opened, his face going insufferably smug. Out of nowhere, he folded his arms across his chest.
Choi Woo-jin stared at him, incredulous.
"What are you doing right now?"
"You were looking at my painting with greedy eyes. I'm saying that if you want one that badly, call me hyung and I'll paint you one. So go on. Call me hyung."
"Give me a break. Hey, Kwak Suho — even if you're dying to hear someone call you hyung, I can't. I'm the older one."
"What?"
"Anyway, that's beside the point. Paint another one. I'm going to sell it."
"What? Sell it?"
"Yeah. You said you've got people waiting in line for your work, didn't you?"
"Well. I mean, I do."
Kwak Suho lifted his chin a little higher as he answered. Lee Jun and Choi Woo-jin both snorted a laugh.
They were thinking of the same thing: Kwak Suho's paintings didn't just sell the moment they were offered — there was a waiting list of people lined up to buy them.
Choi Woo-jin looked from Kwak Suho back to the painting, then turned to Lee Jun.
"Jun, I've been thinking. If we lock this guy up and make him paint, we'll be filthy rich overnight. We might even put up a building right then and there."
"A building?"
"Yeah. I forgot for a second — this guy's paintings sell for a fortune."
"That's true."
Lee Jun nodded; he knew exactly what Kwak Suho's work went for. Bolstered by the agreement, Choi Woo-jin turned on Kwak Suho.
"Kwak Suho! All you have to do is suffer a little. For our dream, you can put up with that much, can't you?"
"Dreeeam?"
"That's right. You just grit your teeth and keep painting. Then we take that money, put up a building, and found the Dream Animal Hospital."
"Hey, hey, what kind of ridiculous—"
"The hell it is! Was our dream just a joke to you?"
Choi Woo-jin cut in before the sentence was even finished, and Kwak Suho faltered.
"Th-that's not what I meant. But what does that have to do with me painting?"
"It has everything to do with it. We've been working like d— wait, let me rephrase. I can't use language like that when we're talking about making a dream come true. This is our pure, noble, and sacred dream we're talking about."
Lee Jun and Kwak Suho stared at him like he'd lost his mind as Choi Woo-jin actually pressed his palms together and started pouring out lofty, sacred words.
Choi Woo-jin paid their looks no mind at all and kept going.
"Anyway, we work day and night! So you should work too."
"I am working."
"Who said you weren't? I'm saying work more."
"What is that supposed to mean? I work incredibly hard, you know. Jun, you know that, right? I work a ton."
"That's true."
"Hey, you still get days off, though."
"I don't. I work every day."
"What are you talking about? Every time I call, you're dead asleep."
"That's because you only ever call when I'm sleeping."
"Whatever. Look — look at Jun. You think he spent four days unable to even wake up for fun? The overwork, the sleeplessness — his face is half of what it used to be."
"Ahem. I'll give you that. This one really has been working too much."
"See? He's been working like crazy. And so have I."
Even Kwak Suho had to concede that Choi Woo-jin worked a great deal. The man standing in front of him had a well-earned reputation as a workaholic.
"Well. That's fair."
"So you work too!"
"Why did the conversation suddenly jump there? And I already work a lot, okay?"
"Work more. That's how we put up a building faster."
"Ah, has the ghost of a man who died without putting up a building possessed you? Why do you keep going on about a building?"
"Going on about a building, my foot. Hey — what are we even talking about right now?"
"You telling me to work more."
"That's a given. We're talking about our dream. Our dream! Our dream!"
"...We were."
"Good. You said it. So what is our dream?"
"To build the Dream Animal Hospital?"
"Right. And what is that Dream Animal Hospital supposed to be?"
"Well... a place where we treat the kids so they don't have to be sick. A place where they can run around as much as they want. And..."
Kwak Suho trailed off, groping for the rest, and Lee Jun picked it up beside him.
"We said we'd give the ones with nowhere to go a place to sleep, and feed them too."
"We did."
A silence settled over them. It wasn't awkwardness — all three had simply drifted into memory, and the conversation had gone quiet. Each of them gazed off somewhere with a distant, tender look, a smile on his face. In that same faraway voice, Lee Jun spoke at last.
"That animal hospital Suho drew... it was really something."
"It was. It was magnificent. Honestly, I still picture it sometimes."
"So do I."
Lee Jun agreed, and Kwak Suho looked at the two of them, the corner of his mouth curling up.
"When did I even paint that? And you two are still thinking about it?"
Neither of them answered. Kwak Suho hadn't asked because he wanted an answer. He was simply grateful that his friends still remembered a picture he had drawn so long ago.
He tapped open a photo in his phone's album.
The other two's eyes went wide.
"Whoa..."
"Wow. You still have it. Kwak Suho!"
The photograph was of the very painting the three of them had just been talking about — the animal hospital they had dreamed of as children, back when they hadn't known a thing.
There was a broad, house-like building of pure white, with several more buildings clustered around it. Neat green lawns spread in every direction, and across those wide lawns all kinds of animals had been drawn.
Dogs, cats, raccoon dogs, foxes, a lion, even a turtle, and a monkey.
Birds, too.
They must have put down every animal that had come to mind the day the three of them had put their heads together and talked about their dream.
And among them, one puppy was swimming with a cast on its leg — in a swimming pool drawn beside the building. Next to the pool stood one more small structure, and on that small structure someone had written Rehab Room.
Lee Jun laughed.
"There's even a difficult word like 'rehab room' on there. You guys were pretty serious."
"Of course we were. We were dead serious back then. Look here — there's a cancer treatment room too."
"There's a psychotherapy room over here. What's this one?"
"What?"
"This building by the entrance."
Choi Woo-jin pinched the photo larger on Kwak Suho's phone, and his eyes went round.
"That's an ER?"
"This is the inpatient ward. There's a surgery building too?"
Lee Jun pointed at the buildings with his finger, smiling as he spoke.
"We really were serious. Look at all these hard words. A radiation therapy room — where did we even hear that?"
"Your grandfather must have told us."
"He probably did."
"We really were something else, even as kids."
"This all came out of Jun's head, so Jun was the one who was something else. Was this fourth grade? Fifth?"
"Fourth-grade winter break, wasn't it?"
"And we already had a cancer ward, psychotherapy, an ER — at an animal hospital. There weren't even any large animal hospitals back then."
"That's thanks to Grandfather. He used to tell us about animal hospitals in other countries."
For a moment, none of them spoke. Each of them was thinking of Lee Jun's grandfather — the veterinarian Lee Seokwon.
The brief drift into memory passed, and Choi Woo-jin spoke again.
"Anyway, even if we can't build an animal hospital this big and this close to nature, it should at least be on the scale of Daehan Animal Hospital, right? That's the only way to do proper exams and surgeries. Honestly, I've been jealous of Daehan's ophthalmology center."
"I heard their investor is insanely wealthy."
At Lee Jun's words, Choi Woo-jin wrinkled his nose.
"Oh? Animal hospitals have investors?"
Kwak Suho asked.
"They do. Daehan Animal Hospital is enormous. He's British, apparently, and he has an absurd amount of money."
"Wow..."
Kwak Suho's mouth fell open, and Choi Woo-jin went on.
"However. But! We're fine. We've got you, Kwak Suho. And we've got walking corporations of our own."
"Corporations? Ah — our three little ones?"
"That's right. The money Hoesaegi, Gkamnyangi, and Sapsaree bring in alone is enormous. What's there to worry about?"
"Mm. That's true. Then maybe it's time we started making the animal hospital more concrete. A hospital like this one is too much — for now."
For now did not mean they were giving up on the animal hospital in the painting. The other two understood that perfectly.
"Someday we should build a hospital like this. An animal hospital where they can run around without a single worry."
"Yeah. Before that, let's build an animal-friendly hospital first. The kind Jun is always singing about — a hospital that can catch diseases early, but can also handle major surgeries."
"There has to be a huge swimming pool for rehab, too."
"And a forest might be too much, but we need a place they can walk, like the second-floor playground."
"We'll need the first-floor rehab playground as well."
"And a space where the guardians of long-term inpatients can rest, like at Namgung Animal Hospital."
"Alright. Let's do that. But look — we have to put up a building first, don't we? And for that, we need land."
"Right. The building is the most important thing. If we don't want to get kicked out, we need to own the building."
"I'll give you that! Walking paths, a rehab room, and we've even installed an MRI and a CT — and then we'd have to move? Ugh, that's a nightmare."
Lee Jun agreed with Choi Woo-jin with some heat.
"Everything else is the same. If we relocate, we have to set it all up from scratch. Our hospital already moved once."
"Ah, that's right, isn't it? But why did Life Love Animal Hospital move? Wasn't the old location better?"
Kwak Suho directed the question at Choi Woo-jin, but it was Lee Jun who answered.
"Ah — you weren't even in the country then, so you wouldn't know. The old landlord sold the building."
"What's that got to do with it?"
"The new owner was going to rebuild, so they got evicted. Our director at the time took out a huge loan just to redo the interior."
"Aigoo. Hearing that, we really do need our own building, even if we have to stretch for it."
"Exactly. If we don't want to get kicked out."
"The bar is high. We have to secure a building first. And then there's the staff problem..."
Lee Jun let his memory rewind — back to the interviews they had held when they were hiring.
"To build the animal hospital of our dreams, we'd need at least fifty staff, right?"
"Of course. These days, any decent place is over fifty. We might even need more."
"There are places with over a hundred, after all."
"Exactly. That's the only way a three-shift rotation runs properly. If it gets too hard, the vets leave."
"I suppose so. But finding staff who actually click with us — that's no small thing."
"It's easy."
Choi Woo-jin said it like a fact.
"What's easy about it? They have to get along with our vets, they have to love the animals, and then there's—"
"Anyone who spends time around you ends up that way. So hire more. Hire them and let's try it. Systematic volunteer work, clinical care — all of it."
"Oh! Does that mean you're joining too, Choi Woo-jin?"
"Ahem. Well. We did promise."
"That's right — you said you'd be vice director if Jun built a big animal hospital."
"When did I say that? I said I'd be director."
"Then what about Jun?"
"He can be director too. But tell me, Kwak Suho — what about you? You can't even be director?"
"You little—! Is director the only title there is? I, I'll..."
"Puhahaha. Go on, try calling me Director."
Choi Woo-jin said it with a thoroughly arrogant look, and Kwak Suho's face went scarlet. A few seconds passed. Then Kwak Suho shouted, looking suddenly unburdened.
"That's right. We have President Namgung."
He turned to Choi Woo-jin.
"President. Call me President!"
"That's hilarious. What kind of president are you?"
"If you put up a lot of money, you're the president. You don't need my money?"
"...President!"
"Kahahaha!"
Lee Jun listened to Choi Woo-jin and Kwak Suho's ridiculous exchange, and thought, Woo-jin's right — the bigger we get, the more there will be to do. Which means we'll be able to do more of the things we actually want to do.
Talking it through, he could feel the plan for the Dream Animal Hospital growing a little more solid, a little more real. We can't build the Dream Animal Hospital right now. But if we take it one step at a time, we'll get closer to the dream, bit by bit.
And the first of those steps was perfectly clear.
In Lee Jun's heart, a plan to expand the animal hospital slowly took root.