Middle (5)
"That's correct."
The woman with hollow, sunken eyes looked puzzled. Correct? It wasn't a denial or an excuse. Nor was it the flustered reaction of someone struck at their weakest point. It was simple acknowledgment.
Her expression demanded further explanation. Of course it did. He had spoken of a real tragedy and admitted to it, so now came the time for clarification.
Kim Tae-min continued. The first part had been acknowledgment. The second was the courage required to make it understood.
"The Korea Organ Donation Agency is a relatively new institution. Its history is short, and it has made grave mistakes that left deep wounds."
"......"
"But now we know. A sacrifice for the sake of a miracle isn't something to be taken for granted—it's sacred. And it deserves the proper respect."
April 22, 2009. That was when the agency was first established. An organization barely a decade old.
The world had changed. Yet the number of people desperate for miracles only grew. And in that desperation, terrible mistakes were made.
Shock changes the world. Some things transformed. Others were transformed.
Ji Hyo-rin continued. She was still a trainee, but the sincerity in the newcomer's words carried even greater weight.
"I promise we will show that respect. We'll provide full funeral support, psychological counseling... and."
Ji Hyo-rin's eyes trembled. She was a woman herself, yet she could never fully empathize with the other woman's heart. Still, she made the vow.
Because this was work only an organ transplant coordinator could do. Because it was the proper courtesy owed to those who endured noble sacrifice to deliver miracles.
"I promise to remain by their side until the very end of their final journey. So they won't be lonely..."
Some might say her professional detachment was lacking. But Ji Hyo-rin was only human. Kim Tae-min was human too.
The person known as the guardian of a brain-dead patient—someone's mother—was human as well.
The sound cut off. Cinematic direction. Only the shape of the mouth was captured within the camera frame.
Yet it wasn't merely mouth movements. The expression shifted. The head bowed in gratitude for the choice that had been made. There was no sound, but every ounce of meaning was caught on camera.
And in another university hospital in Seoul, there were parents sobbing as they watched their child's suffering.
"Oh God... Oh God..."
They prayed with clasped hands. Such a tiny body. Not a newborn, but the child who could barely walk was two years old. The father, who had first assumed his daughter was simply a quiet baby, now wept with regret.
It wasn't that she had been well-behaved for the sake of easy parenting. There was a problem with her heart that made it difficult for her to exert herself, and her development had been so poor that her body remained small.
ECMO, they called it. Watching his daughter depend on a machine he'd never even heard of before, the father prayed. Please. Let it be me instead. Let me be the one who suffers.
Please don't torment my child. Oh God. Please. Don't take my daughter away.
Endless waiting. It was a curse disguised as hope, eroding his mind and heart more with every passing day.
At that moment, his smartphone rang. A short ringtone. An unknown number. In the past, he might have hesitated to answer.
But he took the call that began with 02. His trembling hand lifted the phone to his ear. The voice thick with sobs transformed into pure joy.
"Yes? A recipient...?"
Ah. Aah. Aaaah...
Thank you. Thank you so much. The father of one child kept bowing again and again into the receiver. Hope had been born—the hope that he could save his child. Her life was too radiant to be left dependent on a cold machine for her heart and lungs.
A heart transplant. He knew how difficult and dangerous it was. But when there was no other option, the father thanked God.
"Please direct your thanks to the donor and their family. We cannot reveal their identity, but..."
"Aah..."
He set his gratitude toward God aside. He was a father. A man who had held his sick child and wept. A person who understood the pain of parents forced to witness such suffering better than anyone.
To become a recipient meant receiving someone's organs.
To save his two-year-old daughter, someone had lost a child of similar age.
"Sob... hic..."
He clasped his hands once more. Before the joy of saving his daughter came gratitude for the noble sacrifice made within the borders of South Korea.
"Thank... you... hic. Thank you..."
To those who had granted this miracle, his deepest thanks...
Time passed. Filming that began in March finally wrapped in July. The rhythm was different from drama. There was no frantic urgency, but the details demanding attention were far more exacting.
They shot the same scene from multiple angles. Most of all, the project demanded delicate acting capable of conveying profound emotion. The lead actors carried their weight, but so did the veteran supporting actors who appeared in minor roles.
August arrived. The preview screening for the movie Middle began.
"Mom! Hurry up!"
"Yes, dear."
The blunt mother was now approaching fifty. People said personalities changed once male hormones appeared.
But her mother remained exactly the same as she had been in her early twenties.
The daughter who had grown up safely called it a miracle. She had been born congenitally weak with a defective heart. Without surgery, they said, she would die. She didn't know the full details.
Seeing the scar on her chest, she had simply assumed it was from an operation. That was probably why she attended the preview without much thought. It wasn't a film she felt she absolutely had to see. She didn't know much about it from the title alone; it was more accurate to say she had come to see the actor.
"They say Woo Dan-wol is the lead."
"I know."
Within that seemingly blunt expression, a smile appeared. Mother-daughter relationships were supposed to be difficult, weren't they? A mother who earned the money, a daughter raised under her father's guidance.
Even when they wanted to grow closer, an invisible wall existed between them. Because of the blunt expressions and clumsy communication, they had fought often during her adolescence. But once she matured and became an adult, she came to understand. She understood her mother. And so, as a daughter, she made an effort.
That first step was this movie. She was a fan of the recently rising actor Woo Dan-wol, so she had applied for the preview with burning determination. Every fan knew what it meant to see it a few weeks early.
The actors and director would greet the audience after the film. Inside the darkened theater, mother and daughter took their seats carefully. She wasn't sure why they were handing out tissues, but she accepted them anyway.
Was it a sad movie? Looking at the poster of Woo Dan-wol in a suit, it was hard to tell. The lights dimmed, and the film began at once.
The movie opened with a woman's scream. From the very first moment, a sob laced with anguish rang out, causing the audience's eyes to widen. Soon that surprise turned to anger.
Not everyone, but most knew the story. It was that shocking, that relatable. If one was born human and possessed the capacity for empathy, it was a tale that could not help but move the heart.
The mother and daughter's expressions darkened as they watched. A suffocating frustration rose from deep inside them. They had become immersed in the anger and the icy reality.
The film continued. Woo Dan-wol appeared. Han Da-sol appeared. The two of them seemed no different from grim reapers.
Dressed in black suits, they approached those in the greatest pain and asked them to make the most agonizing choice of all.
'Mom...?'
A sideways glance. The twenty-three-year-old woman was startled by the look on her mother's face. In twenty-three years, she had never seen her mother wear such an expression.
Was she holding back tears? That was all the look seemed to say. Worried her mother might feel embarrassed, the daughter focused on the screen instead of staring. Though surprised, the excellent direction and acting quickly pulled her back into the story.
"Ah..."
A small gasp escaped. It was a dark theater where etiquette was expected, yet no one could blame her for the sound.
Some might find it frustrating. From Woo Dan-wol's perspective. From Han Da-sol's perspective. The guardian of a brain-dead patient was someone who needed to be persuaded. Even if it made the coordinators seem almost like villains, from the protagonists' viewpoint, it was simply a task that had to be resolved.
But the audience was experiencing a different kind of confusion. Not the difficult or unpleasant kind.
The film forced them to view the situation from multiple perspectives. That was the 'direction' the director had intended and the 'message' the actors were delivering.
It wasn't absurd or unrealistic. It was a tragedy that could visit anyone. The story possessed the power to place every viewer inside that very situation.
The guardians who had first seemed frustrating became understandable as their stories unfolded and their hearts were revealed. Viewers couldn't help thinking: What if that were me?
The movie raced toward its climax. Emotions exploded. The message and miracle delivered by Ji Hyo-rin, who was still in her training period, and Kim Tae-min, who continued meeting new people despite his experience, reached the audience.
"Hic... ugh. Hup..."
"Hic..."
It was the film's ending. Someone wept as they sent their child away. Someone else smiled as they received hope.
The mother was crying. Young people cried from emotion. Parents cried from memory. Everyone had experienced the pain of watching their own child suffer.
A single line that both stimulated and comforted that pain. The noble sacrifice that granted a miracle.
"Sob... huheuk..."
Even as the ending credits rolled, the tears did not stop. The daughter, who had calmed slightly, could not hide her shock at the sight of her mother. She was wailing openly.
The strong mother she had never seen break down before had transformed into a woman sobbing with all her heart.
"Why are you crying... Mom..."
Seeing that, the daughter began crying too. Her mother answered through sobs. Because the miracle shown in the film had touched her so deeply.
The heart beating inside her daughter's chest. The realization that it was not originally hers, but a miracle born from someone's noble sacrifice. Because she felt that truth more clearly than anything else, she wept and wept.