One Year to Live
My name is Noh Hoojin.
A country boy who came up to Seoul, ground down by seven years of corporate life, only to receive a sudden terminal diagnosis of malignant brain tumor.
Age thirty-two. Far too young to die.
"Excuse me? You're saying I have a malignant brain tumor?"
I asked, stunned. The doctor answered with complete indifference.
"Yes. Well… it has a rather unusual appearance, but the diagnosis is malignant brain tumor."
"…Unusual appearance?"
"Yes. How should I put it? Almost as if it's alive and moving… At any rate, judging by the metastasis, you have about a year at most. But don't worry too much. Some patients live more than five years."
"And where is that person now…?"
At my question, the doctor looked out the window and never managed an answer. Then he asked again.
"Would you like to try a combination of chemotherapy and radiation?"
He stared straight at me.
"…"
I stared straight back.
The feeling was strange. Something about it irritated me, yet I couldn't express the irritation. Anger rose with nowhere to aim it. I wanted to cry, but there was nowhere to lean.
Through that tangle of complicated, subtle emotions, practical problems began surfacing one by one.
What was I going to do about work?
What if I collapsed while driving? What if I had a seizure in my sleep?
Then I noticed the doctor still sitting there, blankly watching me.
This man was not going to be any help.
Scraping my chair back, I stood up.
"I'll pass on the treatment. Just prescribe the medication."
I said it flatly, and the doctor accepted my decision at once.
That easily?
"Understood. Contact us if you change your mind."
He handed me a sheet of paper folded in half.
"Ah, and visiting one of these might help as well."
"What is this?"
"A list of cancer patient support groups. Shared suffering and all that — going could give you strength."
I unfolded the paper. Groups were listed by cancer type, complete with names, locations, times, and descriptions.
Give me strength… What was that supposed to mean.
"Have you been to any of them yourself, Doctor?"
"Pardon? Why would I go there…?"
Leaving the doctor with his baffled expression, I walked out of the hospital.
Staying longer wasn't going to help much either.
I stopped by the pharmacy and filled the prescription. They packed the meds tightly into a large paper bag.
Why did that feel so reassuring?
It was a pitiful thing.
I considered walking all the way to the office, then decided on the bus.
I'd taken a half-day, so time was tight, and for the sake of my aching brain it seemed the wiser choice.
When I reached the bus stop, a few people were already waiting. Cigarette smoke drifted from somewhere nearby.
I glanced over. Right beside the stop, two high school kids stood with cigarettes dangling from their mouths.
Our eyes met, and I instinctively looked away.
The other people at the stop were keeping quiet too.
You didn't mess with kids these days. You never knew when you'd get retaliated against.
But only for a moment. The smoke seeped into my nose and seemed to burrow all the way into my brain, and before I knew it my feet were carrying me toward them.
Where a guy who couldn't even fight found that kind of confidence, I had no idea. Maybe I was just furious at my own pathetic self.
"Hey, kids. You can't smoke in a public place. Put them out. Now."
I walked up and said it. The two of them blew smoke into my face and sneered.
In a single sweep I took in their eyes, their expressions, their clothes, even the dirt on their shoes.
Their mouths are rough, but they've never been in a real fight. The one on the right keeps touching his ankle. Old sprain? The one on the left has a loose stance. No intention of stepping up first.
The fact that I was analyzing someone like this surprised even me.
"What're you on about. Heh."
"Crazy old fart. You know who we are?"
"If I did, I wouldn't be talking polite."
I leaned right into their faces and whispered.
"I'd talk down to you, you little shits."
"Wh-what?"
What the hell was I relying on to pull this?
Even as I did it, I was more than a little rattled myself.
I was going to die soon anyway, so maybe I'd just lost my fear.
The two of them looked just as thrown.
"What is this guy's problem."
"Is he insane…"
"Yeah. I'm insane. You little bastards."
In one motion I snatched the cigarettes from their mouths and flung them to the ground. Then I stomped them hard under my dress shoes, shouting as I went.
Thud. Thud!
"Don't! Smoke! In! Public! Places! You! Fucking! Brats!!"
Thud. Thud!
The cigarettes were shredded beyond recognition. I stomped so furiously I was out of breath, my head spinning.
As if taking it out on cigarettes was going to fix anything that couldn't be fixed.
"Hah… hah…"
When I came back to myself and looked around, not only the two students but everyone nearby was staring at me with strange eyes.
What had I just done?
I turned to leave.
Right then—
A chill.
Every hair on my body stood on end, and the back of my head prickled.
I ducked without thinking, and a brick sailed over my skull.
One of the high schoolers had aimed for the back of my head.
In that instant, countless movie scenes flashed through my mind, and before I knew it I hooked his leg and locked an arm around his neck. Then I swung him forward with everything I had.
Whoosh—
"Wha—!"
The boy went airborne and slammed into the wall beside us.
"Ugh…"
He crumpled where he landed, writhing.
"What the— you son of a bitch!!"
The remaining kid hurled his bag at me and launched himself into a flying kick. Bag to block my vision, foot to the face — that was the plan.
Then something astonishing happened.
Time suddenly slowed. The bag hung clearly in midair, and behind it the boy charging in was just as sharp.
I slipped past the flying bag and drove my arm hard up between his legs.
Crack!
"Gyaaaaah!"
Something burst with a sound like a cracked egg, and time snapped back to normal. The boy who'd been mid-kick hit the sidewalk and rolled, clutching his crotch.
Ohhh!
Whoa!
Holy shit!
The people who'd been watching erupted in gasps and murmurs.
"Get lost while I'm still asking nicely, you high school punks!"
Confidence surging, I barked it at them with a vicious edge.
The two kids, barely managing to pull themselves together, saw the crowd turning against them and scrambled away.
A few people raised their phones to film me. I yanked my bag up to cover my face and started running.
At the same time, a thousand thoughts flooded my head.
Damn it! Had I lost my mind? Why did I do that?
I ran until my breath burned in my throat, confirmed no one was chasing me, and stood there catching my wind.
My heart hammered as if it would burst. My arms and legs shook.
"What the hell… hah, hah… how… hah… did that happen?"
I slowly straightened and looked down at my trembling hands.
Those movements had not been mine. Action-movie stuff, the kind you only saw on screen.
Beeeep— beeeing—
"Ugh!"
Right then a high-pitched tone hit, and a headache crashed over me.
"Why all of a sudden…?"
I had no choice but to stand there and endure it until the pain faded.
A short while later, once the headache finally eased, I dragged my exhausted body upright and headed back to the office. I'd used a half-day morning leave — I needed to get in quickly.
Should I just blow it off?
Part of me wanted to abandon everything right there. But that felt too much like giving up on myself, so I decided to go back for now.
Yeah. Head back first. Think it through after work.
Hidden third-generation chaebol heiress. Kang Bitna.
On her grandfather's orders, she had concealed her identity and entered his company as a new hire. Her cards had been frozen. Her beloved car confiscated. She had more than a streak of wildness in her, and the point was to knock some of it out of her and force her to adapt.
Sitting at the bus stop with music in her earphones, she witnessed something bizarre.
That was definitely Assistant Manager Noh Hoojin.
A man whose style was every bit as outdated as his name suggested — thoroughly ordinary, thoroughly unremarkable.
Introverted and timid, he was quietly ostracized even at the office, a punching bag for his superiors, and even the juniors tended to look down on him.
How to put it? Just… a pathetic person?
Even she, who'd only been at the company a week, had already clocked exactly where he stood in the hierarchy.
So what the hell was that just now?
He'd suddenly snatched cigarettes from a pair of high schoolers and stomped them into oblivion. Not only that — he'd taken down two boys who jumped him from behind in a single strike each, then vanished like he was fleeing the scene.
Did he think he was Genji from some Overwatch match?
What was that?
It had been genuinely intimidating… and strangely, she found herself curious about him.
Back at the office, the first thing she did was watch Assistant Manager Noh carefully. He was doing the same pushover routine as always, getting walked over left and right.
Did I imagine it?
She tilted her head.
She kept watching until nearly quitting time, and nothing seemed different from usual.
But there was a twist at the end.
The section chief grabbed his coat, looked around at the staff, and said,
"You all know there's a company dinner tonight, right? Don't even think about slipping out. Head straight—"
"Section Chief."
Assistant Manager Noh Hoojin, who had been quietly working at his desk, raised his hand and stood.
"I'm terminal. I don't have much time. I'll be leaving early."
Completely flat. Not a single rise or fall in his tone.
Then he tidied his desk, picked up his bag with absolute composure, and walked out of the office.
"Uh…"
He had never shown anything remotely like that before. Every employee, even the deputy manager, could only stare after him with blank faces.
Had anyone ever imagined that man capable of a joke like that?
Right then—
"Pfft!"
A laugh burst out of her before she could stop it.
"Ah— sorry."
She covered her mouth quickly and bowed her head.
He's leaving early because he's terminal? What is that. That's way too funny!!
But her face was still smiling.
I left the office and headed straight for the subway.
At the same time, I started replaying everything that had happened that afternoon.
I never expected the past to come back this clearly!
I'd flattened two high schoolers, run, felt the headache, returned to the office, and thrown myself into the backlog of work.
Strangely, though, the heavy fog in my head had lifted. My concentration had sharpened. My senses felt more acute, and my reflexes had improved to a startling degree.
I couldn't count how many times I'd snatched a pen or a document out of the air just before it hit the floor.
Normally I would have dropped things and earned the staff's snickers for it.
And in seven years at the company, I had just done something I'd never once dared.
Going head-on against the section chief's old-man nonsense! What the hell was I thinking?
On the other hand, it also felt liberating.
How to put it? Like I'd tasted freedom.
Maybe all of this was because of the time bomb sitting inside my skull.
Was that it? The last flare of vitality people supposedly get right before they die — a final rally?
Damn it… If I was going to die anyway, I might as well do everything I wanted out of sheer spite.
I have to quit the company sooner or later anyway.
While I was thinking, I found myself already in line at the subway entrance.
Remarkably, even with my thoughts fully occupied, my body moved without the slightest hesitation.
As if my body and my head were operating on separate tracks.
The evening rush-hour subway was a brutal crush of people, but unlike the morning commute, there was life in their faces. The death masks from the morning had bloomed wide open.
Soon enough, I'll be saying goodbye to this hell train too.
Sorting my thoughts one by one like this, I felt surprisingly light.
Since things had come to this, what about living in the mountains like those hermits on I Am a Natural Person?
I'd vaguely heard stories of cancer patients who went into the wilderness and succeeded with natural treatment.
On the off chance, I searched it up on my phone.
Then quietly turned the screen off.
Right. I didn't have any money.