The Day I Lost My Past and Gained My Future
That was the first time I ever saw the future through my eyes.
It happened on the day of the tank lorry chain collision, ten years ago.
Among the thirteen vehicles involved in the pile-up, ours was one of them.
The first person to drag me out from the wrecked car was my father.
He carried me to a safe spot, then turned back toward the accident scene.
My mother was still trapped inside the vehicle.
“Woo-jin. Dad will bring Mom. You stay right here and wait quietly, okay?”
Those words left my father’s bloodied lips, forced into a smile.
At that exact moment, the future unfolded in my vision.
The future where he would be swept away by the explosion while trying to save her.
“Dad… don’t go…!”
In the haze of my broken mind, I called out weakly to him.
Yet my voice was barely a whisper.
It never reached him.
In the end he went after my mother,
and I never saw either of my parents again.
*
I woke up ten days after the accident.
My entire body was bandaged, lying on a hospital bed.
The scent of hospital disinfectant hung thick in the air.
I felt as if I were floating above the world, strangely detached.
The pain itself was muted.
What disturbed me more was the numbness in my left arm and leg.
“Mom.”
I called out in a daze, searching for her.
By my bed sat my mother.
“Woo-jin….”
……It wasn’t my mother.
There was a woman who looked almost identical to her.
My aunt stared down at me, tears streaming as she forced a smile.
She tried desperately to smile for me, yet the tears fell anyway.
“Aunt… what about Mom?”
My voice came out completely wrong.
Eventually my aunt broke down and wept openly.
Standing beside her was my cousin Cha Ji-yeon.
She acted like an older sister to me, even though we were the same age and she was six months older.
She had always been a grumpy girl.
That day, though, she wore an unusually tight-lipped expression, trying hard not to cry.
Her stubbornness amused me, so I laughed.
*
My condition had been far worse than anyone realized.
All the bones in my body were broken, and some organs were damaged.
By some miracle, nothing was amputated and no permanent disability remained.
The doctors said I would eventually live a normal life.
Others told me I had been protected by my departed parents.
Hearing that made me want to laugh bitterly.
What kind of miracle was this?
I couldn’t move even an inch from this bed.
I was in so much pain I wanted to die.
My parents were gone.
……If this truly were a miracle, they would have survived too.
I cursed the doctors under my breath and mourned my miserable fate.
With my parents gone, my body crippled, and pain that felt endless, the despair was already crushing.
Then a new problem appeared.
Was it my eyes?
Shadows began to linger in my vision.
The doctors said it could be post-accident syndrome.
But all tests showed nothing wrong with my eyes.
They told me to rest and it would pass.
They dismissed it with those tired, ordinary words.
At first I accepted it and waited it out.
But the symptoms only grew worse.
For example, a nurse drops a pen.
I see the pen hit the floor, then see it drop again, and the sound arrives half a second later.
By then I realized something was off.
The sound came from the second drop, not the first.
The actual sound originated from the later event.
The eye that registered the sound was the real one.
The eye that saw the earlier drop was the shadow.
In my vision, shadows appeared before the real events.
Whenever I thought about moving my fingers, the shadow moved first.
Then my actual finger followed a full second later.
When I intended to press the nurse call button, the shadow pressed it first.
Then, one second later, I did the same.
At first the phenomenon felt intriguing.
Since I was lying in bed with nothing to do, I decided to study it.
It became my new game in the boring hospital days.
If I concentrated, I could pull the shadow forward even further.
At first the gap between shadow and reality was only one second.
So it was barely noticeable.
I kept trying to advance it.
The next day the gap grew to two seconds.
The day after that, three.
With every passing day the difference widened.
Seeing both shadow and reality in one field of vision became increasingly uncomfortable.
So I experimented.
After a day of practice I managed to separate them.
I created a virtual second monitor off to the side.
The main screen showed the real world.
The second screen showed the future that would unfold.
From then on it was no longer just a shadow.
It was the future I saw before the actual events.
It was the world seen one second early.
Future Sight.
Yes, this was it.
I had named the phenomenon Future Sight.
The day I lost my past and gained my future.
Since I couldn’t do anything from the bed, I spent every waking moment researching it.
The possibilities of Future Sight were endless.
It was an ability anyone could master with enough effort.
By practicing, I could see further and further into the future.
Even futures that would never happen if I did nothing.
If I imagined a different outcome, I could see it.
I could even add more second monitors to display multiple branches of possibilities.
I could see both myself pressing the nurse call button and the version that did not.
I could see the future where the nurse would enter the room and the one where she would not.
Even futures that were physically impossible.
For instance, the version where I screamed and caused a scene, or the one where I jumped out the window.
I could see any future I mentally chose to create, even though I would never actually carry it out.
My heart raced.
I couldn’t leave the bed, yet my world suddenly felt far larger than before.
Of course, while I was hospitalized, no future showed me escaping the room.
If I tried to cause trouble, I would be restrained to the bed.
If I tried to jump, I would be re-operated on and bound like a criminal.
Even if I didn’t want to be restrained, I forced myself to stay still.
*
When my condition improved and I was transferred to a general ward, new intruders appeared.
It was my aunt and her two daughters.
“Want an apple?”
“No thanks.”
Every morning my cousin Cha Ji-yeon would visit my room.
Even when I refused, she began peeling the apple.
Her knife work was clumsy, so the flesh was ruined more than the peel.
But she ignored it completely.
“Here.”
“I said I’m not eating.”
She held the lopsided apple to my mouth.
“Ugh.”
Even if I refused, she forced it past my lips.
Future Sight showed me no future where I refused to eat the apple.
If I spat it out she would simply pick it up and force it back.
In the end I had to chew and swallow the painful apple.
Only at lunchtime did she finally leave.
Instead she was replaced by her younger sister, Cha Se-yeon.
“Ahaha! Oppa, look at this! It’s so funny!”
“Ha…”
Se-yeon kept scrolling her phone, showing me the funniest clips.
“See? Funny, right? Laugh!”
“No. Not really.”
“Not funny? Then how about this?”
Se-yeon repeated the same teasing until I laughed.
Visiting patients was supposed to prioritize the patient’s rest.
These two clearly didn’t understand that.
As evening approached Se-yeon would leave, and then my aunt would come.
At least she didn’t harass me like the girls.
But…
“Woo-jin, is there anything uncomfortable?”
“No.”
“Are you being well cared for in the hospital?”
“Of course.”
“Do you need to pee? Should I help?”
“No.”
“Then I’ll wipe you? I’ll do it.”
“It’s fine.”
“There’s no need to feel shy. I’m your aunt.”
“……I really am fine.”
“I’m your aunt, so it’s fine.”
My aunt was overly attentive.
Even though the nurse was doing everything, she insisted on helping.
But I hated showing my naked body to her.
Especially when she helped with my urine, or lifted my legs like changing a baby’s diaper.
“Hehe.”
She would smile as if she were cute… I hated it.
“Ah, sorry, Woo-jin. I wasn’t laughing at you. It’s just… you look so cute.”
While smiling, she wiped every inch of my body thoroughly.
“You only have two daughters, don’t you? I always wanted a son. Now it feels like Woo-jin is my son… oh.”
My aunt’s smiling face froze.
My certain part had grown larger than usual.
“U-umm… you’re a man too? Ahaha. N-no problem, it’s fine. It just means you’re healthy. Good thing, right?”
She forced a laugh and looked away.
Heat burned on my face.
Ardor refused to obey my will.
Because she kept wiping me.
Because her hands kept brushing my private parts.
Because she was looking right at it.
And because she was… my first love.
My parents were gone.
My body was ruined.
The world had completely changed.
I was still young and immature.
Even though I didn’t consciously realize it, the anxiety was clear.
In that anxious situation, someone appeared to give me unconditional love.
My aunt.
The one who took away all my fear.
The one who resembled my mother.
It was only natural that I would feel something special for her.
“Done! All finished!”
My aunt finished wiping me with a towel and helped me into my hospital gown.
But my arousal was still evident, visible through the fabric.
It was a stubborn little thing, even though it was small.
“……Sorry, Woo-jin. I wasn’t being delicate enough.”
Instead my aunt apologized with obvious embarrassment.
I had no answer.
Until she left the room, an awkward silence filled the ward.
*
That was how it was until bedtime every day.
She and the two cousins tormented me.
I knew they did it for my sake.
But to me, it was nothing but an interruption.
“Hey, stop messing with me.”
“What? And why are you calling me ‘hey’? I told you to call me ‘nuna’.”
One day I snapped at my older cousin Cha Ji-yeon.
“You’re distracting me from my practice.”
Cha Ji-yeon was watching YouTube on her phone.
She hadn’t even put in her earbuds, so the sound spilled into my ears.
Why couldn’t she watch it at home instead?
I didn’t understand why she had to do it in someone else’s hospital room.
“Practice what?”
“Life.”
“Life? What does that mean?”
Cha Ji-yeon kept poking and asking.
I sighed and answered.
“If I can’t do anything, I won’t survive this cruel world. I have no parents, and my body is useless.”
Her expression hardened at my pessimistic words.
But soon the usual cruel look returned as she poked my side.
“So what are you practicing?”
“Something like that.”
“Huh? You never told me.”
“It’s nothing. Ouch!”
If my body had been intact, I would have fought back.
But with my limbs bound, I couldn’t even retaliate against Cha Ji-yeon’s poking.
“Don’t worry, Lee Woo-jin. Your parents are gone, but you’ll be living with us. So you can just stay.”
Cha Ji-yeon, who had been tormenting me without moving, suddenly spoke up.
“We have a duty to support. I heard that if parents die young, relatives have to take you in. So when you’re discharged, you’ll live with us.”
“Tch.”
“I don’t want to either. But there’s nothing I can do. That’s the law.”
Cha Ji-yeon’s face twisted as if the law were the enemy.
“So stop with all those weird worries. No more ‘my body’s useless’ or ‘no parents.’ Got it?”
From now on we’re your family.
She muttered quietly, almost inaudible.
That day, for the first time, Cha Ji-yeon truly looked like my older sister to me.