CH 108

At that moment, a huge hand wiped the sweat off her neck. A cold drink touched her hot cheek. Lee-yeon was more surprised by the touch of the hand than the beverage. She turned around.

“You stood out in the sun for too long.” Kwon Chae-woo was sweating buckets as he spoke to her.

“I don’t see any stores around here.” Lee-yeon frowned. “Did you run to get that?” Lee-yeon stared blankly at the man that she had been looking for. He didn’t say a word, just smiled and opened the bottle. Lee-yeon took the bottle and brushed the aluminum on its sides. The way he was staring at her hadn’t changed. It only made Lee-yeon feel guilty.

“Did something happen while I was gone?” Kwon Chae-woo asked when he saw Lee-yeon’s face get grim for a split second.

“Well…” Lee-yeon felt it was childish to say she had been anxious because she couldn’t find Kwon Chae-woo, so she said something else. “A famous model was transported here by accident.”

Kwon Chae-woo looked at her weirdly at her strange response.

“They fixed his bones, treated his wound, and later removed his scars and sent the model off,” she said, changing the subject. “But this patient kept on getting worse. Why do you think that is?”

“The patient probably had some other disease.” Kwon Chae-woo frowned at the strange topic. “Another disease that wasn’t caused by the accident, something that was eating him alive inside.”

As Lee-yeon nodded, the man touched her face with his soft hand. “But to completely get better, I heard they had to shave his head and even cut both arms off.” As she looked up at the tree sadly, two voices suddenly spoke.

“What can we do? It’s still better to be alive than dead.” Kwon Chae-woo said.

“So what if you have to take both arms off? I would keep the patient alive no matter what it takes.”

They were similar answers but the second one was a bit odd for some reason. Lee-yeon shook her head and tried to focus. “But this is a tree.”

Choo-ja finally seemed to realize what Lee-yeon was saying and looked at the tree seriously.

“It’s even a good tree,” Lee-yeon said. “It’s the town’s protector and has such a heartwarming story. Many people come to see it. What if this tree suddenly looked so bad all of a sudden? What would they think of it?”

Choo-ja shook her head as if she had a lot to think about and Lee-yeon lowered her voice even further. A cicada that started crying overpowered her voice.

“The hospital probably didn’t want to be part of it,” she said. “They left it alone for so long that it would have died if they did something even slightly wrong. They probably didn’t want to try and fix it anymore and get blamed for things beyond their control.” She sighed. “There’s a good chance that they just took a bit of money and treated it well enough to keep its appearance as it is.” Lee-yeon drank the drink in her hand and rolled up her sleeves. “I think it was the tree doctors who made up those nonsense horror stories as well.”

“What?”

“They probably didn’t want to be responsible for letting a 500-year-old historical tree die.” Her voice got lower. “This is a battle of wits between the city, the townspeople, the shaman, and the tree doctors.”

They really didn’t care about the spirit tree dying or not. Town’s people cared more about its appearance, the doctors were too scared of being responsible for anything, and the city and the shaman just took whatever money they could take.

Lee-yeon took a deep breath and frowned. “I’m…. going to turn everything upside down.”

***

Kwon Chae-woo hugged Lee-yeon before she even could finish talking. Lee-yeon couldn’t see anything but his shoulders as he covered her in his embrace. As she looked down, she could see the red of the hanbok if the shaman from a near distance.

“How did this happen?”

Lee-yeon heard an unfamiliar voice. It was quite steady, but it also sounded like a kicking tongue to Lee-yeon.

“It looks like the willow branch is also going to fall soon. It’s going to hurt a lot.”

Lee-yeon tried to look past Kwon Chae-woo’s shoulder. Even though she could mostly only see Kwon Chae-woo’s white shirt, she caught a glimpse of the shaman’s face.

The willow branch….

Lee-yeon bit her tongue. She didn’t know why she felt like she was trapped when she heard the so-called shaman say that.

“Lee-yeon.” Kwon Chae-woo noticed that her breathing had changed slightly and looked down. Lee-yeon grabbed Kwon Chae-woo’s shirt and tried to calm herself. Lee-yeon just stared at the shaman without any hesitation.

It felt like she had been slapped in the face. The shaman was right. Lee-yeon felt more hurt than angry, so she buried her nose in Kwon Chae-woo’s shoulder to try and breathe.

He just placed a hand on her head. “Should we go home?”

“Yes,” she said. “Yes. Let’s go home.”

A tree always gave clear answers but, whenever Kwon Chae-woo was involved, things got messy. What bothered her the most was her guilt, the fact that she was hiding the truth. Lee-yeon wiped her forehead and hid her shaking hands.

It seemed like it was time to stop running. If she didn’t get rid of her guilt, then the relationship would die in the end. It was like everyone and everything was pushing Lee-yeon to tell the truth. She wanted to be understood. She wanted to be accepted. Lee-yeon pushed herself to step towards the truth that she had been avoiding.

“Chae-woo.” She cleared her throat. “I…. I have something to tell you after the competition.”

“What is it?”

“Just… the past.”

She felt dizzy and suffocated even as she said it. It was time to unload all the lies. It was the most terrifying moment she would ever have to face. It was something she had to get over.

“When I first met you 2 years ago, there was something I didn’t tell you.”

A willow branch falling means that you’re saying goodbye to a loved one.