CH 33

Walking while looking at his phone’s navigation, Jeong-woo got off at Apgujeong station and arrived in front of a building soon after.

In front of a clinic that had a fairly large hospital-like exterior, although not as big as an AN hospital, there was a plaque that read “The best way to cope with heartbreak and separation from sweet dreams.”

Passing through the entrance, he glanced at a picture on an advertising board.

‘Is that Dr. Moon’s senior colleague, the director?’

Jeong-woo was slightly nervous at the confident career woman’s face, who looked to be in her mid-thirties. Her appearance was outstanding enough to have a full-face picture, but she exuded a similar atmosphere to Dr. Moon.

Except for wearing glasses, she had a cool and aloof feeling.

‘If her personality is also like that, she’s a bit scary.’

Passing through the neatly paved pastel-tone corridor, Jeong-woo stood in front of the reception desk.

“I made a reservation. Han Jeong-woo.”

After stating his name and showing his ID, he received instructions to go directly to examination room 1.

As it was a sleep clinic, it was very quiet and not as noisy or chaotic as a hospital.

Even just sitting in the lobby, the atmosphere was so calming that he felt like he would start yawning.

Jeong-woo cautiously approached the examination room at the end of the corridor, blending into the serene atmosphere.

As soon as he opened the door, the director, who had a name tag with the name “Seong Mi-na”, turned her head.

“Welcome.”

A fresh voice.

“Would you like to sit in the front?”

As Jeong-woo sat facing her, Director Seong checked the reservation information on a small monitor.

“Mr. Han Jeong-woo. This is your first visit today….”

Then Director Seong’s eyes widened.

“That’s right. You came here through Chae-eun’s introduction?”

“Ah, yes.”

“Anyway.”

Director Seong placed her chin on her hands and slowly looked at Jeong-woo.

“Since it’s been a long time since Chae-eun asked me personally, are you two dating?”

“…… No, we’re just coworkers.”

“Excuse me, I’m being rude on our first meeting.”

With a smile, Director Seong’s tone of apology had a bright energy to it.

As she tapped away at the keyboard, a diagnostic form titled ‘Sleep Survey’ appeared on the monitor facing Jeong-woo.

“If you press it with your hand, it will be selected. Please listen to me while you fill it out.”

Jeong-woo looked at the screen.

[It takes more than 30 minutes to fall asleep after lying down.]

[0. Not at all…4. Every day.]

He selected each one, and the director spoke up.

“The diagnostic process will be comprehensive. Especially, we need to collect accurate information related to sleep. Relax and take your time.”

“I don’t think I can relax when I hear the same questions from you earlier.”

“I did that on purpose.”

The director looked at Jeong-woo, who was puzzled.

“Most insomnia patients are defensive. If you say things like ‘Oh, you haven’t been able to sleep for a few days?’ or ‘Are you afraid to go to bed?’ to patients who are depressed, they just get stressed.”

“Is that so?”

“Oh, have you been suffering because you haven’t been able to sleep for a few days?”

Although it wasn’t a complaining tone, nor did it feel comforting, Jeong-woo nodded his head.

“Comforting words other than identifying the exact cause and treatment method are not even worth a single sleeping pill. That’s the summary. In that sense….”

When Jeong-woo finished the survey, the director spoke in a cheerful voice.

“Go to bed. Room 4. It’s on the second floor. Let’s talk more tomorrow.”

Director Seong phrasing felt like it lacked emotion.

Jeong-woo remembered seeing on the signboard that the director was introduced as “[Medical Doctor / Neuro-Psychiatrist Specialist]” and sensed that this was also an expert who was picky, even though Doctor Moon and Director Seong had different personalities.

Jeong-woo, who had gone up to the second floor, wandered around the “Sleep Examination Room” area and looked around for Room 4. Most of the rooms had their lights turned off, but in the room at the end with a gloomy door, light was seeping out.

It seemed like someone was inside the VIP examination room.

“Since this is Cheongdam-dong, it’s natural that the upper class is here, right?”

Jeong-woo was surprised to find that the interior of Room 4, the Sleep Room, was more luxurious than he had expected.

If his own room was an inn, then this was a hotel. The room next to the VIP room was probably a penthouse.

As he sat briefly on the plush-looking bed, the door opened.

“I am the sleep attendant.”

A clinic staff member came in. The man who had placed his sleepwear and toiletries asked him to prepare and said he would be back soon.

After changing into his sleepwear and finishing brushing his teeth and washing his face in the bathroom outside, the staff member came in with the EEG equipment.

Attaching sensors to his head, face, and legs, the staff member told him to lie down on the bed.

“We’ll test your brainwaves before you fall asleep and turn off the lights.”

“What if I can’t sleep?”

“A sleep study is not about whether you sleep well, but about examining any problems with sleep.”

Upon hearing this, Jeong-woo felt relieved.

‘It looks more comfortable than my own house, so I might be able to sleep well.’

After a while, the lights in the room turned off.

A spacious room with warm light pouring in through a large window.

Yoon Yi-seol, lying in bed, opened her eyes slightly and confirmed that it was morning before letting out a groan and covering her face with a pillow.

She was tossing and turning, struggling with the desire to stay in the cozy feeling of the blanket and not get up, as if fighting against something.

“Oh my.”

Yoon Yi-seol turned her head to the middle-aged woman in a white gown sitting next to the table.

“Director?”

“Merry Christmas.”

“When did you arrive?”

“10 minutes ago.”

“I slept soundly. I didn’t even realize you came.”

Yawning and covering her mouth with her palm, Yoon Yi-seol sat up in bed.

The director watched Yoon Yi-seol which had a shy expression.

The patient, who was visiting the clinic for the third week in a row, opened her eyes sharply as if making a commitment to stay positive for the day. She tried to pull herself together and stay alert, knowing that she would surely be oversensitive after taking a nap, but she pretended to be sound asleep out of consideration for her doctor.

Seong Mi-na started interpreting the sleep test graph that was displayed on the monitor.

“The patient fell asleep at 12 o’clock. They woke up at 2 o’clock and couldn’t sleep for 30 minutes. After that, they mostly had shallow sleep. They are currently feeling groggy. The time they woke up was… 10 minutes ago.”

Yoon Yi-seol stuck out her tongue.

“Whenever I come here, it feels like a haunted place. But still, I managed to sleep for a total of four hours.”

Approaching Yoon Yi-seol with an amazed expression, Seong Mi-na gently removed the sensor attached to her forehead.

“We can postpone the morning test to the afternoon. Let’s have breakfast and get some more sleep.”

“I’m fine.”

“When is it that you’re not feeling well, Ms. Yi-seol?”

After thinking for a moment, Yoon Yi-seol answered Seong Mi-na’s question.

“When I can’t come up with a good melody.”

“And?”

“When the melody I come up with is bad.”

“I didn’t hear you sing anything bad, Yi-seol.”

“That’s because I carefully chose the songs I sang. Oh! Is that it? The pain of the creator.”

“You come here often, that you’ve become a doctor.”

With a smile, Seong Mi-na removed all the sensors from Yoon Yi-seol’s face.

“After the diagnosis is done today, are you gonna start treatment right away?”

“Treatment?”

“You can’t just keep sleeping for four hours like this forever.”

“The director doesn’t really know. Napping is a basic option for celebrities.”

Yoon Yi-seol whispered softly with her hand covering her mouth.

“I don’t want to say it myself, but I’m really popular and busy.”

“I know, you’re popular.”

This flower-like young lady is known in the Korean music industry as a talented musician who is loved by many in her early twenties. The formal name for the symptoms she is experiencing is “early persistent depressive disorder”, but she denies it, and as a result, she suffers from sleep disorders.

It’s not serious yet, but there’s no guarantee that it won’t develop into melancholia, the disease of geniuses, and there’s no guarantee that she won’t make drastic choices.

Yoon Yi-seol has a natural sensitivity that goes beyond the common sense of ordinary people.

Living for fans and giving up personal happiness because she cannot be selfish for even a moment. This was also a problem that arose from her being excessively kind and having a soft heart.

That’s why Seong Mi-na felt attached to this patient and felt the urge to help her as much as possible.

“After breakfast, let’s talk.”

“Then I’ll go wash up and come back.”

Yoon Yi-seol grabbed a towel and walked towards the door.

Meanwhile, Seong Mi-na was looking at the sleep graph again when she heard the sound of the door opening and closing. She looked up to see Yoon Yi-seol leaning against the wall with a startled expression.

“What’s wrong?”

“Th-there’s someone outside…”

“Stay calm and tell me.”

“That person just passed by.”

There should be only a person who would be wandering around the sleep test area at this time.

¨Mr. Hang Jeong-woo?”

Yoon Yi-seol nodded enthusiastically, and Seong Mi-na noticed a change in her emotions that she hadn’t seen in three weeks.

“Do you know him? Should you go say hello?”

“How can I when I look like this?”

“Like what?”

“It’s one of my ugly days. I don’t have my stylist or makeup artist here.”

Seong Mi-na chuckled. Despite wearing pajamas, Yoon Yi-seol still looked attractive and pretty to her, but perhaps she felt lacking compared to her usual standards.

“And I said such a stupid thing at that time. If I knew this would happen, I wouldn’t have done it. Why did I do that?”

Watching Yoon Yi-seol open the door and look outside like she was checking for something, Seong Mi-na’s eyes lit up.

As a psychiatrist, the most difficult part of dealing with patients is finding the first clue to unravel the tangle of their mind. If you pull the thread too quickly, it only tangles more, and if you try to untangle each strand too carefully, the clue may disappear forever.

‘Shall we look into it?’

Seong Mi-na turned her gaze to the hat and mask that Yoon Yi-seol wore last night.

“Ms. Yi-seol, let’s do the examination now.”

“Oh, does he have to do it too?”

“Yes, he came here because of insomnia, just like you.”

“Ah…”

Knowing that the person she is interested in has had a similar experience may provide a clue to treating the cold of her troubled heart.

“Behavioral test?”

Jeong-woo looked at the smartwatch-like recorder that the staff was putting on his wrist and tilted his head.

“We will conduct a cognitive and behavioral test with basic physical examination as listed here until lunchtime. By giving the body some stress or inducing activities that stimulate interest or psychological stress….”

Looking at the list, Jeong-woo confirmed that this was a comprehensive sleep examination similar to a comprehensive health examination.

“It’s really thorough.”

“We have to do it thoroughly for the patient’s sake. There are only eight patients today, so there should be some time to spare during the waiting period. After lunch, the director will give you his opinion right away.”

After the staff left, Jeong-woo also got up from his seat.

He walked out of the sleep room and went up to the third floor when he suddenly sent a text message wondering if Jeong-chan was doing well.

[Have you decided on the date course?]

[I’m working on it. We’re meeting for lunch.]

[Don’t go and act annoyed around that girl like you usually do when you can’t have a good conversation with her, it’s not her fault.]

[Are you kidding me? I won’t get annoyed!]

The annoyance was conveyed even through the text message, making Jeong-woo smirk.

I went up to the third floor and there was someone who had arrived earlier in front of the body composition measurement room listed as number 1.

She was a slender woman wearing a mask and pressing down a baseball cap, and she kept wandering around the body composition measurement room, constantly looking inside.

The record number on the device that Jeong-woo was holding was number eight. The woman had number seven written on her wrist. Jeong-woo thought they might be waiting together, so he greeted her first.

“Hello.”

As soon as he spoke, the woman, who was startled, froze in place. Seeing her not responding, Jeong-woo wondered, ‘Did I do something wrong?’ and scratched his chin as he sat down on the chair by the hallway.

‘Maybe she caught a cold.’

He didn’t think much of her wearing a mask indoors and was just waiting, but her reaction was a bit strange. She kept fidgeting.

‘What did I say?’

He shrugged off the clinic-provided gown and looked at the woman again. She seemed anxious and kept twirling her long hair hanging down below her shoulders.

‘Hmm?’

He briefly focused and stared at her, but suddenly her hair magnified and turned into a microcosm. The scent molecules in the shape of flower petals that scattered into the air from her hair were captivating to Jeong-woo since it was the first time he had seen them.

Meanwhile, the door to the measurement room opened.

“Number seven, please come in.”

The woman disappeared into the room like a gust of wind. The scent molecules were blown into Jeong-woo’s nostrils by the wind.

It was the smell of shampoo that Jeong-woo also used in the morning in front of the sink in the sleeping area.

‘Could she be… a VIP?’

Jeong-woo became curious about why someone who lived so leisurely and in such a nice place would suffer from insomnia.

The VIP woman continued to receive the examination one step ahead of Jeong-woo.

At the place where they test stress by applying electric shock to the fingers, the person screamed “Gyak!” but then disappeared quickly as soon as it was over.

At the place where one had to walk 2km on a treadmill, she quickly disappear after the sound of the alarm without following the employee’s instructions.

Jeong-woo had to scratch his head as she kept avoiding him. “Why is she like this? Is she from the upper class who dislikes meeting ordinary people?”

The room they entered this time was a place that measured the level of brain waves when feeling interested. The testing method was simple, they attached a sensor and sat in a chair to play a ring-throwing game.

The VIP woman, who had already failed four times and was contemplating the last one while holding it in her hand, quickly threw it away as soon as Jeong-woo entered. With a regretful sigh, she clenched her fist tightly.

“I’ll do it again in a bit. The third time will be a success.”

It seemed that she had already tried several times. She ended up standing awkwardly behind the chair in the examination room, unable to escape quickly this time.

“Excuse me.”

He passed her closely, revealing only her skin next to the mask, but she felt quite young.

Jeong-woo then wore the measuring device on his head and grabbed the ring.

There was a wooden pole 2 meters away and a plastic ring the size of a palm.

He thought he could easily succeed at this level, which was like a children’s toy, so he threw it comfortably.

‘Ugh.’

He failed the first and second attempts in a row.

‘It’s not as easy as I thought.’

Jeong-woo concentrated and threw the third one. The ring flew narrowly and hit the pole, bouncing off.

“Stay calm. You only need to succeed once in the measurement. It’s the change in brain waves at the moment of success that’s needed.”

As the employee spoke, Jeong-woo felt even more nervous and had failed four times already. He was afraid he would have to try again.

“It’s a shame. It looks like you were very tense,” the VIP woman standing behind him said, covering her mouth and smiling.

‘Ugh, how embarrassing.’

Thinking this was not the way to go, Jeong-woo took a deep breath and called out to his colleagues for the first time in a while.

‘Gather around, come on!’

He collected stardust in his right hand and put it in the ring. His left hand pointed towards the wooden rod.

He gathered all the stardust floating around the rod. As soon as he confirmed that the rod had turned [+] for a moment, he quickly threw the plastic ring that had turned [-].

The ring flew in a curve and was sucked into the rod like it had a magnet. It seemed like a success that ignored gravity, but the employee was looking at the brain wave test results and didn’t seem to notice.

‘Okay. I saved my pride. Thank you for your hard work.’

Jeong-woo smiled with satisfaction as he scattered the stardust in both hands. They gathered and dispersed better than before.

“Your brain waves are a bit unusual now. There are more theta waves.”

Jeong-woo asked the employee about the difference.

“I can’t be sure since this isn’t a high-density EEG, but you should get the director’s opinion.”

As Jeong-woo took off the equipment and stepped back, the VIP woman sat down on the chair and took off her hat.

As the flowing hair shone like a commercial, Jeong-woo couldn’t help but be amazed by the glossy appearance. Perhaps because she was from a wealthy family, she seemed to have been taking good care of herself.

However, the attempt this time was progressing as if it would end up as another failure. When the third ring fell to the side, the employee said with a half-giving-up face, “It’s not a necessary examination, so you can just skip it this time.”

The slight shrinkage of the VIP’s shoulders conveyed the feeling of disappointment to those around her.

‘She seems to have poor motor skills.’ (Look who’s talking cough cough)

Jeong-woo thought for a moment. If she couldn’t succeed, there would be no point in doing the examination. It wouldn’t hurt to try to help out and practice handling the dust particles.

Jeong-woo, who was standing behind her, reached out both hands. It was a method of gathering dust particles from a distance and concentrating them in a specific area, just like before.

The fourth ring flew towards the pole and failed very close to it, falling to the ground.

‘It’s not easy.’

The fifth ring.

‘Send it here and remove it there.’

The group of dust particles gathered at a distance of about 3 meters, each taking their place and moving.

Ping-grr. Chuck.

Like two fabrics sticking together due to static electricity, the ring was hung on the pole.

“Wow!”

The VIP woman raised her hand in excitement. She seemed to be very pleased with something that wasn’t a big deal for someone from a wealthy family, so Jeong-woo laughed.

After an hour of examination, a 10-minute break came.

Jeong-woo was sitting on a bench in the third-floor hallway, drinking water. Then he perked up his ears at the sound coming out of the ventilation grille above his head.

As the clinic was generally quiet, the sound of someone humming while washing their hands was faintly audible.

But as he listened, the melody became very familiar.

‘This is….’

A sweet humming.

How could he forget that charming voice that had shocked his ears not long ago?

The sound soon disappeared. Jeong-woo looked at the back of a woman walking away on the other side of the hallway, who had just come out of the women’s restroom at the end of the ventilation grille. If she were carrying a guitar on that body type, she would be the one from back then.

“Oh? Ms. Yoon Yi-seol?”

The movement of the VIP girl stopped.