***
In the living room of Gyeonhui’s house, Ojae crumpled the newspaper that he was reading with a sigh. Ojae took out his phone from his pocket and called the media relations team of the company.
“What are you doing now? Put the damn articles down immediately! I’ve been asking you since yesterday. What the hell are all of you doing!? Do it now!”
When Ojae hung up the phone, he breathed a deep sigh.
“The vice president is not going to let this go… Hah…”
Ojae closed his eyes since he already got scared by imagining Mrs. Shin.
‘Bzzz.’ Then, Ojae’s cell phone rang.
“Oh, Jesus!”
Ojae hesitated without identifying the caller immediately.
Since he could no longer ignore the phone that was continuously ringing, he carefully checked the caller while holding the phone away as far as he could.
“Dr. Seo?”
The caller was Dr. Seo.
Ojae quickly answered the phone with a sigh of relief.
“Hello, Dr. Seo. What’s going on?”
“Ojae, You’re going to have to come to the hospital now.”
“What? What’s going on all of a sudden?”
“The chairman Woo is in critical condition now.”
“Really? The chairman?” Hearing Dr. Seo’s words, Ojae’s eyes widened.
“Okay, we are on the way right now.”
As soon as he hung up the call, Ojae went upstairs in a hurry.
‘Kung, kung, kung.’
“Hey, Gyeonhui! Gyeonhui!”
He hurriedly pounded on the door and called his name, but there was no answer from inside the room.
“Gyeonhui! The chairman’s in critical condition. Can you hear me? Gyeonhui!”
Ojae called his name many times, but Ojae could hear no answers from inside.
At that moment, the last word that Gyeonhui said in the previous night went through Ojae’s head.
‘… I couldn’t say anything to her… It was so miserable…’
Gyeonhui never would have said anything like that. Ojae recalled Gyeonhui’s face that was struck like the whole world would crash down.
“Gyeonhui! Are you okay? Answer me!”
Ojae shouted at him while knocking on the door roughly as if he were crushing the door.
Still, there was no reaction from inside of the room.
Ojae could no longer wait and started kicking the door, but the door wouldn’t budge.
Eventually, Ojae ran at the door from a distance and struck the door roughly with his shoulder.
‘Kung!’
The door opened with a loud thud, and Ojae fell on the floor.
His shoulder was hurt, but Ojae rose right away and started looking for Gyeonhui.
“Gyeonhui, Gyeonhui!”
Despite his best efforts, Gyeonhui was nowhere to be seen.
Ojae was running around everywhere in the room and found Gyeonhui fallen on the floor of the dressing room.
“Gyeonhui!”
Gyeonhui had fallen without moving an inch as if he was dead.
Ojae saw Gyeonhui’s pale face, sweaty hair, and blue lips.
When Ojae crawled to approach Gyeonhui, he hurriedly put his own ear near Gyeonhi’s mouth to see if he was breathing.
Luckily, he was.
“Hey! Wake up! Pull yourself together! Gyeonhui!”
Ojae roughly shook him to wake him up.
However, he couldn’t wake up because he was unconscious.
Ojae, with a concerned expression, hurriedly carried him.
66. The ominous presentiment is never wrong
The outer road in the city of Paju.
When Sun carefully entered onto the country road, she checked the navigation once again.
“It’s here, right?”
The road that wasn’t paved last time she was here was newly opened.
She checked the navigation once again and slowly turned the steering wheel.
When she followed the curvy path, she noticed an orphanage in the distance.
After pulling her car over for a moment, Sun turned her head and looked at the sketchbook in the passenger’s seat.
The sketchbook was a bit torn because of Labong.
She picked up the sketchbook while she was lost in thought, but she pricked her index finger on the binder coil that was sticking out from the sketchbook.
“Oh, no…”
The cut was not deep, but she bled a surprising amount.
She quickly put her finger in her mouth to stop the bleeding.
Her eyes were trembling because of the pain.
‘Is this the right thing to do? Should I go back before it’s too late…’
She knew better than anyone that it would be harder to forget someone when you know more about him.
However, she really wanted to know who he truly was having known and loved him for three years.
She fought with these two thoughts for a long time, not knowing what the right thing to do was.
“… Hah…”
After a while, she exhaled a long sigh and began pushing the accelerator to the floor.
***
The VIP facility in the university hospital.
“It’s peritonitis.”
Dr. Seo said after checking Gyeonhui’s medical chart.
Ojae was watching him sleep and looked at Dr. Seo in amazement.
“Peritonitis? So, did his appendix burst inside of him?”
Dr. Seo shook his head over Ojae’s question.
“It’s not the appendix, it’s the stomach.”
“What?”
“It’s a perforation of the stomach. It means there was a hole in the stomach, and the food flowed out. It was infected because of the bacteria that grew from the foreign substance that went into his stomach. It can kill people and put them in shock because of the severe and high fever along with abdominal pain.”
“His stomach was just fine, and I can’t understand how it happened all of a sudden. When we checked his vitals last time, there was no trace of any of this.”
“Look at this picture first.”
Dr. Seo continued his explanation by showing the endoscope picture of Gyeonhui’s stomach.
“His stomach wall has a nasty lesion.”
His stomach in the photo was all inflamed and messed up, just as Dr. Seo said to Ojae.
Ojae’s face hardened.
“… What’s the cause?”
“Mainly, it’s stress and alcohol. If his stomach was fine, then how much alcohol was he drinking in the last few weeks?”
“Hah…”
Ojae exhaled a slight sigh while biting his lower lips.
“Did the symptoms start last night?”
“Yes,” Ojae replied while recalling what Gyeonhui did last night.
“The pain must have been severe… It’s a miracle that he had endured until this morning.”
Hearing Dr. Seo’s words, Ojae turned his head and looked at Gyeonhui.
“Is he fine now?”
“Yes, the surgery has been done well.”
“But why can’t he wake up?”
When Ojae asked this to Dr. Seo, the doctor motioned for Ojae to go out with him and talk outside quietly.
Ojae reluctantly followed him out of the hospital room in doubt.
When Ojae left the room, Dr. Seo spoke quietly, “He was already awake.”
“What?”
“He woke up a while ago.”
“… But then why is he not…”
“He probably doesn’t want to wake up now. I don’t know what’s going on.”
Ojae looked at Gyeonhui through a small window in the door.
Ojae couldn’t understand his mind more than anyone about why he didn’t want to wake up.
“Is this about his girlfriend, the girl from last time?” Dr. Seo lowered his voice and asked.
“Hah…” Instead of answering, Ojae breathed a heavy sigh.
Ojae’s cell phone rang as he watched him with a firm expression.
It was Mrs. Shin.
“Oh, no…” Ojae bit his lower lip and mumbled to himself.
“Doctor Seo, how is the chairman doing?”
“Oh, that’s right. I’m sorry, I lost track of things. He’s stable now.”
“Is the vice President upstairs?”
“Sure. She came to the hospital for the first time, and they are still taking care of him. It’s not easy to get a daughter-in-law like her, but he’s so blessed.”
Dr. Seo said with a gentle smile. However, Ojae started speaking with a firm expression.
“Well, I’ll go upstairs to see them for a while, so please take care of him until I return, and please keep it a secret from the vice president. You know?”
“Well, okay.”
Following Dr. Seo’s involuntary answer, Ojae began to walk down the aisle in a hurry.
Dr. Seo, who was watching at Ojae’s back, slowly turned his head and looked at Gyeonhui through the small window.
“It’s all about the woman. By the way, it was…”
Dr. Seo, who was clicking his tongue in sympathy, was lost in thought like something had come to mind suddenly.
“That girl… What was her name? Was it Cheonsun?”
Dr. Seo tried to remember the memories that were wavering like heat in his head.
At that time, a memory came to his mind.
“… No way… The high school student?”
Dr. Seo’s eyes widened exceptionally so.