Or Indirectly, at Least
Lim Junseo walked ahead down the hospital corridor and spoke up.
"You don't need to see Na Yuntae?"
"Not for now."
As I answered, I glanced sideways at the Ghost keeping pace beside me.
"It's been so long, though... haah. Still, I found him based on what I roughly remembered, didn't I?"
I didn't argue. He was right. If anything, it was impressive he'd remembered even this much.
And yet I couldn't quite place where I'd seen the name Na Yuntae. Even a sharp mind couldn't retain every trivial detail from the past. That was precisely why my brain kept itching like this — because it was a good brain, and it knew it had seen that name somewhere.
That was it. I'd seen it then. I just couldn't summon the when.
Lim Junseo kept going.
"He's probably a first-year resident, maybe second — after he finished his public health service."
"Go on."
Lim's footsteps stopped dead.
"You fucker. What am I, your employee?"
"Go on."
"Ah, you crazy bastard. I should've just studied on my own."
"If you'd studied on your own, that brain of yours never would've gotten into medical school."
"Augh... fuck. Thaaanks. Thanks a whole damn lot."
Still, the fact that he knew he was grateful confirmed my friend's character wasn't that rotten. In fact, Lim's parents had tried to bow to me on the day of his high school graduation.
The memory prompted me to ask.
"Your parents are well, I hope?"
"You lunatic."
Lim looked at me, his face crumpled.
"What?"
"If your friend's parents try to bow to you, the normal thing is to stop them, isn't it? And on the dirt of the schoolyard, no less?"
"You're still on about that?"
"...It still blows my mind, thinking about it. What kind of crazy bastard just stands there with his hands behind his back and watches my mom and dad try to prostrate themselves?"
I'd been young then... I decided to keep the recollection short. Of course, my conviction that I'd done enough to deserve that degree of gratitude hadn't changed. Anyway, the lack of further comment suggested they were doing well. That was a relief.
We arrived in front of the coffee shop on the first floor. Lim pointed inside.
"You're on your own. I told him the first floor when I called, so he'll be waiting. I'm out."
"You could at least tell me which one is Na Yuntae."
"I said he's a resident. You'll know when you see him."
I watched Lim's grumbling back recede for a moment, then stepped into the coffee shop.
Among the bustle, one man leapt out at me.
Still in his white coat. Dark circles under his eyes, black as bruises. A man so wrung out by exhaustion he looked half-dead.
"...Is that him? The guy from back then?"
"Is it not?"
"...It might be... but can a person fall apart this badly in just a few years...? I remember him looking so fresh, and now..."
Listening to the Ghost click his tongue, I walked toward Na Yuntae.
Honestly.
For a mission of absurd difficulty, I had to admit we'd reached the target with almost embarrassing ease. The Ghost had fortunately remembered, and I had a friend at Yeonseo University Hospital.
But the world being what it is, an easy downhill is always followed by a climb.
"...Uh, I really don't know anything about that."
Na Yuntae kept denying it, insisting he had no idea.
"I was told you gave this synopsis to actress Shin Chaeyoon's manager."
"I didn't. Really."
His gaze grazed the synopsis I'd set on the table, then slid away.
Evasion.
I knew the signals. A glance, then the head dropping — that was the signal of a man who had no intention of opening his mouth. If he'd truly known nothing, curiosity alone would have made him look closer. Wanting to know why a stranger had come looking for you was the most ordinary human instinct in the world.
"It's him. He's been wrung out pretty badly, but I remember now. So why is he saying it isn't?"
There would be a reason. The medical profession was brutally exhausting at this stage, but it was a career with a guaranteed future. As for someone foolish enough to abandon being a doctor to debut as a writer... I wasn't sure. Did people like that exist?
Of course, there could be differences in values. If a ghost had latched onto them and asked them to grant a wish, the way one had with me, that would be another matter. Failing that, maybe he was simply embarrassed by a synopsis he'd written years ago.
"But this guy... why does he look familiar?"
As if taking notes, I wrote in the notebook I'd set on the table.
Because I've seen him before?
"No, that's not what I mean... He looks strangely familiar. Like someone I've seen recently."
Recently?
I might finally have an answer to the itch that had been crawling through my skull since earlier. I studied Na Yuntae's haggard face with care.
The more I examined him, the more I felt it too — what the Ghost had said. That face was familiar. Déjà vu, maybe?
No. This wasn't déjà vu. This was resemblance. He looked like someone I knew.
At last, as if a sheet of tracing paper had been laid over Na Yuntae's face, another person's features superimposed themselves on his. The moment that current of thought completed itself, my mouth moved, slowly.
Na Yuntae's head snapped up.
"You know my sister?"
A laugh of sheer disbelief slipped out of me.
Did I know her. I knew her too well.
The moment I fitted the last piece of the puzzle, the completed memory detonated in a chain reaction. Where I'd seen Yeonseo University and the name Na Yuntae. Four-year-old memories unfurled through my mind as if someone had hit play.
Early summer, or late spring. The office of Assemblyman Choi Giseok.
In the small conference room off to one side of the office, Chief Aide Lee Jaewook opened the briefing folder. He spoke without lifting his eyes from the documents.
"Father, mother, and one younger brother... the brother's at Yeonseo University, I see?"
"Ah, yes! Unlike me, he's good at... studying."
At that, Chief Aide Lee Jaewook raised his head and looked at the person in front of him.
He could tell exactly how nervous the interviewee was. The restless handling of her gaze. The dry swallows, one after another. And the way she flinched her eyes away the instant they met his.
He tracked the glance she was trying to escape and spoke.
"We're hiring a Grade 9 administrative secretary. How many people do you think I've interviewed?"
"Uh... um, ah... about ten, maybe?"
"I'm not a man with that kind of free time."
"Uh... then three... or four?"
"Just one. You, Ms. Na Yoonjeong."
Na Yoonjeong's pupils blew wide.
"...Was I the only one who submitted a resume?"
"No. Far more people applied. But you are the only one who passed the document screening. So straighten your shoulders. When we call one person to fill one position, it means we called you because we intend to hire you."
Na Yoonjeong's body jerked. She'd drawn too large a breath — a flicker of hyperventilation.
Chief Aide Lee Jaewook had his reasons for wanting her. It wasn't that the applicant in front of him was the most outstanding.
Among the applicants who met the basic qualifications, neither she nor anyone in her family had ever displayed a political color or made a political statement... and she was the only one who cleared that simple hurdle.
He had vetted the people who'd submitted resumes in advance. There had been no need to cross the line into anything resembling surveillance. Chief Aide Lee Jaewook was, in fact, a man who crossed lines — but these days, SNS and community boards made that kind of information easy enough to find.
Most assembly offices did the same thing. And most of those offices, after the same pre-screening, preferred applicants already leaning their way. Chief Aide Lee Jaewook had judged differently.
Aides must not have political bias.
An assemblyman might leave his party, depending on the circumstances. Factions could split even within a party. It wasn't common, but sometimes they switched affiliation entirely. If the aides carried political leanings of their own, that was a problem waiting to happen.
So he prioritized people who would be loyal to the assemblyman they served — or, failing that, people who would simply focus on the work.
"It's a bit funny to say this after I've already told you you're hired, but. Are you good with computers?"
"Yes. I clock about eight hundred keystrokes on the word-processing certification."
"Can you start tomorrow?"
"Yes, yes! Thank you!"
Her greeting must have pleased him more than a little. A smile thin as a thread traced itself across Chief Aide Lee Jaewook's otherwise expressionless face.
Beyond the office window, a cicada that had woken too early for the season cried itself raw.
A cicada clinging to a tree in the hospital parking lot poured its throat out. The same cry. Even the sound was enough to tell you the season.
I climbed into the car, and the Ghost opened his mouth in a tone of pure disbelief.
"...Secretary Na Yoonjeong is Na Malchul...?"
"I did think there was something unusual about the way she hit a keyboard... but I never would have guessed."
Once I'd shown him a photo on my phone — the two of us, side by side — confirming that I'd worked alongside Secretary Na Yoonjeong, Na Yuntae had finally talked.
"The truth is... my sister wrote that."
"Your sister? Secretary Na Yoonjeong?"
"Yes. Writing was her hobby. I thought she was good, but she only ever wrote. She never even considered showing it to anyone, so I... overdid it a little. I was young then too."
"You bound the copies yourself and circulated them yourself? And Secretary Na Yoonjeong never knew?"
"She doesn't know. At first I was pretty motivated about it — I passed them around through people I knew. Nobody ever got back to me, so I just quit. Figured, ah, so that's why noona never showed anyone."
At that particular stretch I had laughed, having found a version of him that fell just a little short of his older sister.
"If you leave nothing on a synopsis but a pen name — no personal contact information of any kind — of course nobody gets back to you."
In this case, it was true that nobody had contacted them in four years. But it was also possible that someone like the drama director at TVK had come across it before now, and simply given up for lack of a phone number.
"Then why did you say you didn't know?"
To that, Na Yuntae had answered like this.
"She says the work at the assembly office is interesting. She's adapted well, and she's been good at the job for years. I didn't see any reason to go stirring that up."
"That's an answer I can understand."
"Right? Even if this turned into a drama and she got a writing credit, you couldn't even call that success. The reason I overdid it — binding this thing and passing it around — was that she used to be so... cowed, I guess? She'd always been like that. But after she got the job four years ago, that side of her disappeared. I figured that was enough."
"..."
"I always felt like her shrinking like that was my fault. And it was, honestly. Even if we didn't compare at home, the world outside was full of people who would. The little brother's good at school, and the older sister's just... whatever. People say that kind of thing so easily."
They had felt like close siblings. Shortly after that, Na Yuntae had been paged and taken off at a run, like a zombie answering a summons.
I turned the key and laughed, hollow.
"Maybe the old me stole a talent from the drama industry."
"That's not it. Writers who spend years circulating synopses and then go find a life for themselves aren't rare. And that's actual writers — for aspiring ones, even more so."
"I know. I said it because the situation was funny."
The Ghost let out a worn little laugh of his own.
"That's true. Korea really is a small country. They say you're never more than a few degrees of separation from anyone, and I guess they weren't wrong."
"Maybe you and I knew each other in the past too, Ghost. Korea being as small as it is."
"We might have, mightn't we?"
"Or indirectly, at least."
"That would be funny. Makes me curious, too. Where would we even have met?"
The sunlight was still sharp enough to sting the eyes. The problem had been difficult, and yet we'd reached our destination faster than expected. Not the final destination — but we had found the writer, which had been the hardest part.
Which was why we had the leisure to sit in a car and trade jokes.
Though... wouldn't the Old Man hate this? Stealing his people? Not that I necessarily had to steal her. Methods aside, for now.
"I'll need to confirm Secretary Na Yoonjeong's intentions first."
"You should."
I turned the car toward a place that had always been there. A place so familiar it felt like coming home.