A Morning Both Strange and Familiar
The discharge party ended in grand fashion, and by grand I mean: two whole cakes vanished, three chickens were reduced to bare skeletons, and every piece of meat that hit the grill disappeared straight into somebody's mouth. A certain Mr. Lee Hajin, who held a respectable share of that "somebody," was deeply satisfied with the results.
My sole grievance was that, as a discharged patient, my portions had been rationed. This is a human rights violation. It was Dr. Choi Eungyeong's orders, you say? Then it's a medical rights violation. Guarantee patient rights! Woo woo!
"Where'd the cola go?"
"Bottom shelf."
Following the voice from the living room into the kitchen, I opened the fridge and found it, in fact, on the bottom shelf. I was reaching for a can when a voice came from behind me.
"Hajin, time for your meds. It's eight-ten."
Uncle Junseok shook a paper bag of pills.
"I know your medication schedule better than you do."
"This house is broken. Why does anybody here know when I'm supposed to take my meds?"
"Says the girl who ransacks other people's fridge."
"This is other people's fridge?"
Uncle Junseok faltered. What? Why? I've been opening it since I was a kid.
I dug around inside again and found some leftover strawberries. I was about to pop one in my mouth when my knuckles got smacked. Violence is bad, actually.
"Wash it first. And water, not cola. You're taking your meds."
"I can take them WITH cola. The pills reach my stomach either way."
"Hajin, I'm going to choose to believe you're not serious."
Dragged to the table, I found Aunt Jiyeong setting a glass of water down in front of me too. Funny how I escaped the hospital and somehow the nursing staff has only grown.
"Fine, fine, I'm taking them. Drinking all the water too. Why are you on my case as well, Auntie?"
"Well, whose fault is it that people worry?"
I tore open the paper bag and tapped the pills into my palm—a few tablets, a few capsules. Look how much this has shrunk, though. My palm used to be completely full of these; now it's like, what, a snack?
I swept them all into my mouth at once and took a swig of water.
Gulp.
"There? See? I told you I can just take these casually now. I'm not dying anymore."
The answer was silence. It had gone quiet. Too quiet—
"……"
What's going on? A second ago they were all loudly fighting over who got the leftover cake.
"……What?"
"What's what?"
Uncle Junseok answered without missing a beat.
"Why did everyone go quiet all of a sudden?"
"Nobody went quiet."
"They did."
"Hajin, want a strawberry?"
The moment Aunt Jiyeong held out a plate, Mom's voice burst from the living room.
"Honey, where'd you put that box from earlier?"
"What box?"
"The one with Hajin's books in it."
"I put it upstairs, didn't I?"
"No? That one was clothes."
Suddenly everyone was busy. Huh? You weren't busy ten seconds ago. I narrowed my eyes and studied them one by one, but not a single person would meet my gaze.
Suspicious bastards. Wait, that disrespects my elders—fine, suspicious respected persons, then.
I put a strawberry in my mouth. Sweet. Well, whatever. These aren't people who'd do anything bad to me.
Once the party wound down and people started moving, I—on the grounds that a patient must rest—had been excused from all labor well in advance and banished upstairs. Absolute win for me.
I opened the door, and there it was.
"……Whoa."
My room. Or to put it precisely, my room inside Taehyun's house.
The bed was mine. The desk was mine. The bookshelf was mine. The game console sitting in the corner was mine.
I pressed the power button, half worried the thing might have died of loneliness after a year of abandonment, but—beep. Well, would you look at that, it boots just fine. What a good boy.
"Oh."
The save files were untouched, the manga I'd been reading was still lined up on the shelf, and when I pulled open the desk drawer, the chargers, ballpoint pens, coins that had rolled in from who knows where, all the random clutter—everything was exactly as I'd left it.
At this point, is this even a move, or is it a crime scene reconstruction? Who carried all this over while I was gone? I slid out one of the manga—volume 8, then volume 9 right next to it.
Nice. Whoever you are, you're a cultured person who respects book order.
I flung myself onto the bed and instead of poof, it was more like puuuuuff.
"Uuungh."
It was strange. And it was familiar. The mattress, the pillow, the blanket. Ah, except for the ceiling.
"……"
And, while I was at it, the view out the window too. My old room's window used to look out on the neighbor's fence, and if I poked my head out a little, I could see the alley.
Now it overlooks the Kang family garden. Absolute bourgeoisie, these people. Why is your spare room so huge?
Just then, a thunk sounded from outside.
"Maybe we should take that one with us?"
Mom's voice.
"You really can just leave it here."
Aunt Jiyeong's voice.
"No, we can't. We already owe you so much as it is."
"Owe us what? The kids have been in and out of here since they were little; it's hardly new."
"Still, this one—Honey, not that one, the one next to it."
Thunk.
"This one?"
"Not that one!"
"Then this one?"
"No!"
Stay strong, Dad. We believe in you. Do I intend to go help? Absolutely not. Fighting, Dad. You adults will sort it out yourselves.
And so, that night, Mom and Dad didn't go home. Precisely speaking, they didn't go to the home I'd been picturing.
I listened to a long stretch of what goes where, who's sleeping where, which luggage gets moved later—and honestly, about half of it went in one ear and out the other.
What mattered was simple. One: I sleep here tonight. In my room, in Taehyun's house.
"Sweet."
A game console. A bed that's mine. A phone charger. Nobody coming in to take my temperature. No injections. No machines. And—wait for it—not even the nurse aunties who'd drop by on unannounced patrols every two hours asking how I slept.
Is this heaven? I washed up, climbed into bed, pulled the blanket up to my chin, and clicked off the light with the remote. Darkness fell.
It was wonderful.
Nobody's coming in, right?
No temperature checks, no blood pressure cuff, no being woken at dawn to have blood drawn, and no beeeep.
……
……
……
There's way too much nothing, though.
I opened my eyes. Too dark. I rolled onto my right side, waited a bit, rolled onto my left, flipped the pillow over, rolled right again.
"……"
I turned on my phone. 11:47 PM.
Not even that late. I opened my messenger, spotted Convict Grandpa, and raised my thumb.
I wonder if he's asleep by now.
Wait, what time do old people usually sleep? Don't they turn in at nine once they're pushing eighty and get up at four in the morning to go to a spring water spot?
Am I stereotyping? Yeah, that's a stereotype. Still, if I woke him up for nothing, I'd probably get a lecture about what a young punk is doing messaging at this hour, so I closed the chat window.
But reaching out to my school friends felt just as awkward.
More precisely—I'd been told not to. Who I could contact, when I could start meeting people, what I absolutely must not mention; the National Intelligence Service uncle clearly gave me a very, very long explanation, and the only thing I remember is one line.
"Not yet. Wait a little longer."
Tch.
I closed the messenger and fired up the game console instead. Pulling an all-nighter gaming until I passed out from exhaustion had been on my hospital bucket list, after all.
Can Hero Lee Hajin, inheriting the memories of the past, save the world?
Loading. Title screen. Continue. The character appeared, ran around for about five minutes, and then I just turned it off.
And so ended the journey of Hero Lee Hajin. Tragic.
"Boring."
I drank some water, hit the bathroom, opened the window for no reason and closed it again, and arrived right back at bed, blanket, ceiling.
"……"
Okay. In situations like this, there is exactly one solution left.
Over the phone: Are you insane, woman? It's midnight.
This bastard is immune to my threats. I was busy weighing what else I could leverage when the screen changed. Incoming call: Kang Taehyun. I snorted and picked up.
"What, you lunatic. Bored?"
"Yeah."
"Then sleep. Sleep and you won't be bored. Go travel the land of dreams."
"Can't sleep."
"You slept three hours earlier."
"And?"
"And THAT'S why you can't sleep."
"Are you some kind of genius? I always thought you were smart, even as a kid."
"Hanging up. I'm literally about to hang up right now."
"Wait, wait, wait! I haven't even gotten to the point yet!"
"What point?"
"Never mind."
"Hanging up for real."
"Hey!"
The call that began that way turned out to be astonishingly useless. We started with who ate the most cake today, escalated into a critical battle over the truth of whether Taerin noona had swiped several of my strawberries or whether that was actually me, then somehow drifted into games.
"Hey, why did this update turn out so garbage?"
"What era are you living in?"
"I couldn't play this game for a whole year."
"You played it in the hospital, though."
"Is mobile the same as console? You have zero respect for the medium."
"That update came out six months ago."
"……How time flies. How cruel it is."
"Are you a grandfather?"
We talked about the bookshelf too.
"By the way, who moved my books?"
"Me."
"Volumes 9 and 10 got swapped."
"No idea."
"How can you not know? Books have homes too, you know."
"Then swap them back. The books were protesting, demanding their right to housing relocation be guaranteed."
"No. You made the mistake, so YOU come over and fix it."
"You absolute lunatic."
"For the patient's psychological stability—"
"You're not a patient anymore, are you."
"I'm a selectee patient."
"Go die."
"I told you, I don't die anymore?"
I said it, then remembered how the living room had gone suddenly quiet earlier and shut my mouth—but nothing notable came back through the phone.
"I know. That's why I said it."
"……Right."
We kept chatting about nothing for a while. I don't know how long we babbled, but at some point I noticed I was talking less and less, and by the time I was holding the phone to my ear with my eyes closed, saying nothing at all, I could hear faint breathing on the other end.
"Taehyun, what are you doing tomorrow?"
"Nothing."
"Me neither."
"I know. You've become a rich freeloader nobody knows about."
"How do you know that?"
"Your schedule got sent to me too."
"May I be granted permission to inquire as to where exactly my human rights have gone, and to request approval regarding the matter of asking about it?"
"Denied. You have no human rights. Now please, for the love of god, sleep, Your Highness."
"You rotten bastard. I curse you—tonight, no sleep for you until I hang up."
Quiet again. But strangely, this time it wasn't the too-quiet quiet from before.
"Taehyun."
"What."
I opened my mouth, then paused. Why did I call him? No idea.
"Don't hang up."
No sound at all.
"Taehyun?"
"Yeah."
And with that, I closed my eyes again, and whatever we talked about after that, I don't remember.
When I opened my eyes, sunlight that had crept in licking at the curtains was pouring through my much-lighter eyelids.
"……"
An unfamiliar ceiling. Unfamiliar enough that I could stare at it blankly for a few seconds and be perfectly fine with that.
Morning, huh. I blinked and moved my hand, rubbed the tip of my right index finger against my thumb—nothing there. Held my fingers up to check anyway—
"……"
What was I even looking for just now? I turned my head. The nurse call button next to the bed was—
Gone. Right, obviously. This isn't a hospital, it's Taehyun's house.
Still, someone should be coming in soon. Temperature check, blood pressure, morning blood draw if there's one scheduled—
Nobody comes. Nobody is actually coming. So it's finally sinking in, huh—and just then the phone in my hand lit up.
"You absolute lunatic."
The call is STILL connected? Once you realize I'm asleep, hang up already, you lunatic. Seriously, what is wrong with you.
"Taehyun."
No answer.
"Hey."
"……"
"Are you asleep?"
"……Shut up."
His voice was dead. Straight-up corpse. Should I summon a necromancer?
"Why didn't you hang up?"
"You told me not to."
"You actually didn't hang up."
"I'll kill you, you crazy bastard. How are you going to compensate me for my lost sleep?"
"Hey, do you maybe like me?"
"Hanging up. I'm blocking this number, you know that?"
"Wait wait WAIT!"
Beep beep beep. He really hung up.
I set the phone down, sat up on the edge of the bed, and slipped on my slippers as I looked around.
I fell asleep here last night. No nurse came at dawn, no machines went off, no one drew my blood—and yet morning still arrived. For the first time in a year, a morning greeted me somewhere that wasn't a hospital.
"……This is nice."
I got out of bed.
The moment I opened my door, the smell of proper, real food—not hospital food—drifted up, and I floated down the stairs like I was hypnotized. Aunt Jiyeong was setting side dishes on the table.
"Up already, our Hajin?"
"Yep. Good morning, Auntie."
"Sleep well?"
"Slept like a log."
My neck was a little stiff, though. Probably from sleeping with the phone pressed against my ear all night.
"Sit. Eat something before you take your meds, Hajin."
"……Where are my mom and dad, though?"
"They only got back this morning. Still asleep."
Just then a piece of paper stuck to the fridge caught my eye. It was a schedule. Morning, noon, evening—down to the names of every pill.
"Your mom wrote it for you."
"Traitor."
"What was that?"
"I said I love her."
"I heard you the first time."
Why is it that about every single thing concerning me, everyone except me already knows everything?
I sat down at the table, and without any agonizing over porridge-versus-rice, a bowl of rice landed in front of me.
"I'm allowed to eat rice now? This isn't porridge, right?"
"It's rice, kid."
"My loyalty and love. I am yours forever."
"That drama was pretty good, wasn't it."
Just then a door opened upstairs and Taehyun came shuffling down—hair sticking out in every direction, eyes half-shut. I stared at him. He stared at me.
"Hey. You were seriously in the next room?"
"……Where else did you think I was?"
I pulled out my phone and opened the call log. Seven hours, thirteen minutes.
"We were on the phone for seven hours?"
"You told me not to hang up."
"From the next room?"
"You told me not to hang up."
"Just open the door and come over!"
Taehyun yawned.
"And then would you have actually slept?"
"……"
Touché. If we'd been within arm's reach, odds are we'd have messed around all night and neither of us would've slept a wink.
"Genius move, then?"
"Shut it. I'm so tired I'm about to die. Save me."
Taehyun sat down across from me, and Aunt Jiyeong took one look at her son's face and sighed.
"Why are you so exhausted?"
"Whose fault do you think that is."
He glanced my way, so I used that as my garnish and shoveled a big spoonful of rice into my mouth. Nom. I know nothing about anything.
Just then my phone buzzed, and I checked the screen mid-chew.
Excuse me, sir, you cannot exploit a weakness like that and then shake me down. What am I supposed to do with this.
Taehyun asked from across the table, and I almost killed the screen—almost.
"Who is it?"
"Convict Grandpa."
Taehyun's expression stiffened, just slightly.
"……You're still in contact with that guy?"
"Yeah."
"You're meeting him?"
"Apparently."
Buzz again.
Oh ho.
"He says he has something to give me."
"Are you insane? You're going to go meet a grandfather you don't even properly know?"
I set my spoon down.
"He's not someone I don't know."
"You met him at the hospital, right? Do you even know his name?"
"Of course I do."
"Which is?"
I opened my mouth, then paused to think. Uh, what was it again. He's definitely the kind of guy who'd show up on Treewiki, but, hmm. That's the thing—
"……Grandpa?"
Taehyun put his spoon down.
"Don't go. You do have a reason, don't you? For why you can't tell me."
"He's a good grandpa. Don't talk about him like that."
"Based on what?"
"He gives me allowance. And as I've always said, no one who hands out allowance is a bad person. Source: me."
"That makes it MORE suspicious, you lunatic."
Is it, though? I was mid-thought when the phone buzzed again.
I stared down at the screen, then looked up at Taehyun—and he was already looking at me, so I flipped the phone face-down on the table.
"Let's just eat first."
"Hey, Lee Hajin. Answer me properly."
"Rice is important."
"Don't go. I'm warning you, for real. Decide right here and now that you're not going."
"Hey, Kang Taehyun."
I picked my spoon back up.
"I haven't even asked how much allowance he's giving me yet. What's the harm in at least hearing the number before I decide?"
"You're out of your damn mind."