CH 113

She shook him and patted his cheeks, but he showed no signs of waking up. Goosebumps arose from the palms of her hands. She finally resorted to punching his wide chest repeatedly with her soft fists, but the result was the same.

“Wha… what in the world…”

Then all sorts of thoughts came to mind. As if the tips of her fingers had suddenly stiffened, Lee-yeon slowly clenched and unclenched her fists while she calmed down.

Don’t be so dramatic. Think clearly.Lee-yeon took a deep breath and fought to regain her composure. Everyone sleeps in sometimes.

That sort of thing is common sense. There was no need to panic so much about the fact that Kwon Chae-woo was in too deep a sleep to wake up right away.

“Chae-woo, c’mon, get up. What are you dreaming so deeply about? I have to leave for work soon. If I keep dawdling, I’ll get an earful from Joo Dong-mi. You can’t blame me later for not trying to wake you up.”

It wasn’t long before Lee-yeon held a damp towel in her hand, wiping it across the back of his neck to try and revive him. But despite all her efforts, the man didn’t lift a finger. She carefully wiped his eyes, hands, feet, and eyebrows, rubbing like a masseuse, but it grew to be too much for her.

Lee-yeon couldn’t bear to overcome the uneasiness that bubbled up inside her, and in the end she fell to her knees in despair.

“Kwon Chae-woo, wake up! I said wake up!”

Her eyes were misty and her breath stopped short.

“Chae-woo!”

“….”

Lee-yeon sighed and yanked on the clothes of the man who refused to respond no matter how many times she called his name, but there was no strength in her grasp. What went wrong? Lee-yeon ran her hands through her tangled hair and lay back next to him.

“Did… did I do something wrong? I’ve been busy lately, so… maybe that’s…”

Kwon Chae-woo has Kleine-Levin syndrome, so he’s prone to oversleeping. But it wasn’t so difficult for him to wake up regularly in the morning when Lee-yeon was there by his side.

Maybe she’d gotten too used to that and let her guard down. Lee-yeon’s effect on him running out for whatever reason was a predictable enough situation.

“Did I miss something?”

Lee-yeon embraced him in vain as he continued to escape from her like sand. It was the only way she knew how to wake him up. She gathered and drew together what had become empty, but all that remained was silence and a shell of a person.

Eventually, she picked up her phone.

―Hello.

A yawn arose from the drowsy voice on the other end of the line. Then suddenly, as if someone had pushed her over, the cries burst from her.

“Doctor!!”

―So Lee-yeon? What is it, so early in the morning?

The doctor’s tone of voice became clear at once, as if she had immediately picked up on Lee-yeon’s urgency. But rather than words, all that Lee-yeon could muster were tears. She pressed her lips together for a moment and dropped her phone. She managed just barely to swallow her sobs, but her facial expression crumbled helplessly.

“Kwon… Chae-woo… he’s not waking up!”

***

“It really was like a ghost story.”

The Beauty Hospital director stretched his neck from side to side as he spoke.

Lee-yeon was walking around the wide trunk of the sacred tree, taking thorough notes on the results of the surgery, and the director was following her persistently.

“Director So, is there some problem at home?”

“…no.”

“How odd. Can the sacred tree distinguish between people?”

The man scowled and looked up at the unsightly sacred tree.

“I even totaled my car. I’d been on that road thousands of times—who could’ve expected a boulder to suddenly come tumbling toward it? I crossed the center line to avoid it. I mean, my perfect driving record of 30 years was almost ruined!”

“…….”

“Thank God I was the only one hurt. Imagine if it had been someone else!”

He shook his head, shuddering at the thought. Then Lee-yeon stopped walking and turned to look at him.

“It’s alright, sir. I didn’t think you’d run off to get out of doing surgery or anything like that.”

“What?”

“I just meant that you don’t have to feel like you need an excuse.”

As if she’d hit the nail on the head, the director’s face instantly stiffened. He scratched his head and coughed as Lee-yeon continued speaking.

“Well, now I’ll definitely secure the Dome Project.”

“…what?”

“You know, I’m the doctor of a tree that survived a ghost story.”

Lee-yeon evaded the people’s torrent of grievances and passed the second round of evaluation.

Ever since the sacred tree’s unique quality of magnificence disappeared overnight, the village people clicked their tongues and turned their heads every time they passed by it. Lee-yeon was the only one to consistently stop by and check on the tree, as well as keep a record of its healing process.

She half-listened to the director’s rambling as she administered an IV to the tree. The recovery speed had been particularly slow due to the high number of rotten cavities.

Lee-yeon wiped off her sweat with the back of her hand. She hadn’t given much thought to the baby hairs that kept falling from her loose ponytail, until suddenly she recalled an affectionate touch from another time.

“…….”

The feeling of fingertips sweeping baby hairs across her cheek and rubbing her earlobe. At that touch her ears had shivered, yet her neck had grown hot.

It felt like it was only yesterday. Lee-yeon took a moment to lower her head and take a deep breath.

“Choo-ja, it’s done.”

She straightened her back. Choo-ja studied Lee-yeon’s face as if it were her duty, and stood up alongside her.

As soon as the expressionless Lee-yeon picked up her bag and took off first, Choo-ja made a zipped lips gesture toward the Beauty Hospital director. Startled by her biting glare, the man recoiled.

The long rainy season was coming to an end, and it had been one month since Kwon Chae-woo fell asleep.