Episode 320
Many people in the world look at Ha Seong-yoon and call him a saint.
“….”
Actually, maybe that was right.
Ha Seong-yoon did many things that were generally considered ‘good deeds’ in society. When he was a student, he contributed to creating a bullying-free school with his unique atmosphere and actions, and as an adult, he has consistently supported various organizations. As I got older, I joined Doctors Without Borders and traveled to various conflict zones, and now I am focusing on training my juniors.
“…Can that make him a good person?”
Ha Seong-yoon sometimes wondered about that.
‘These actions cannot possibly be part of the essence of a person.’
Before entering the other side of the world and before understanding the other side of the world. Even before he knew he had lost his parents, Ha Seong-yoon continued to have these questions.
For example, if a person who was meticulously planning to kill someone works hard as a volunteer to fake it, and at some point realizes that the plan will not succeed and gives up, all that remains is the fact that he did volunteer work. Then we cannot say that this person is a good person. Because he didn’t kill anyone, he just thrust a knife right in front of his nose.
“Then am I a good person?”
It was also a question.
Ha Seong-yoon often thought of himself as a pretty empty person. He first had this question when he was about 15 years old, so he thought it was a time of stormy weather for him, but when he saw that he still couldn’t solve this question at the age of 40, he thought it was just nature. Ha Seong-yoon thought that he was not the type of person who was overflowing with good will and did good deeds.
“…It’s just a habit.”
I felt proud by doing good deeds, but it was similar to the sense of accomplishment I felt when I completed something that needed to be done. If you think Ha Seong-yoon is a good and good person who views people who are sick or need a little help as a problem that needs to be solved, wouldn’t it be true? That’s what I said when I looked at people like Munsan-gun and Kim Yeon-woo.
“….”
Ha Seong-yoon respected his parents and wanted to be like them. I thought that if we were to find the origin of this ‘habit’ of his own, it would probably lie in his affection for them. So, more than 90% of Ha Seong-yoon’s name was created by his parents.
Those people died.
“It’s my fault.”
He was dead even though he was alive, and Ha Seong-yoon didn’t know it.
“It’s my fault…”
He often knelt alone and prayed in an empty church. They ask God while sitting in a completely dark cathedral with no priest leading the mass, no acolyte to ring the bell by his side, and no believers looking up at them.
“It’s my big fault.”
How can all this disaster be my fault?
“….”
What on earth were you thinking when you created that cruel world?
It was jokingly called a natural disaster, but in the end, the existence of the other side was a space that could not exist unless it was created by God or someone higher. Therefore, the fact that Ha Seong-yoon’s parents died and their children did not even hear of their death could never be attributed to one individual.
“…Therefore, I earnestly hope. The Virgin Mary, a lifelong virgin, all the angels… saints and brothers…”
Ha Seong-yoon was not a good person.
“Pray to God for me.”
“….”
“Amen.”
The day I finished praying for the first time in my life. It was only on that day, long after hearing the whole story from his friend, that Ha Seong-yoon decided to go crazy.
I felt so much hate that even I couldn’t understand it, but since I had no one to vent my anger to, I ended up turning it on God. You would have to be crazy to fawn over the monsters that imitate those you respect.
“…Don’t back down even if you regret it.”
Ha Seong-yoon gradually lost his mind as he recalled his parents’ words of wanting to raise their son to be a good person. He often felt an indescribable sense of discomfort, but since he had already learned too much to go back to the beginning, he walked slowly, step by step.
Then I met some crazy guy.
“Patient Lee Jae-heon?”
“yes.”
“I heard you hurt your arm. Can I take a look?”
At first, I thought I had been attacked by another crazy person, but it turned out to be a crazy person who just cut my arm with his own hand.
‘That’s it.’
Didn’t he even take painkillers for the pain? Ha Seong-yoon scolded himself once again, recalling the proverb that there are many crazy people in the world. Although I had taken a step into the underworld, it was clear that I was still a long way from immersing myself in it.
Still, I suddenly became curious.
“…How did it end up like that?”
My friend probably doesn’t live as separated from reality as he does, but I became curious about the patient I met briefly who gave off an empty atmosphere, as if everything about himself was nothing more than a shell.
“You cut your arm so beautifully, but have you ever learned how to cook?”
It appears that the cuts were made with a kitchen knife or similar knife, but I was curious about what kind of wounds would have occurred if the patient had a scalpel in his hand. Since the main purpose seemed to be to cause pain, a scalpel with a delicate blade might have been unsatisfactory and ended up cutting a lot of wounds.
“…Lee Jae-heon….”
Surprisingly, this is the person who comes up when you search on the Internet.
“Well, my patients are like that.”
In the medical world, Ha Seong-yoon was a fairly prestigious professor, and most of the people who could immediately call him out for simple procedures other than surgery were powerful people or famous people. After confirming that he was from the Lee Dang Group, which had already completed the generational change and was on a roll, he forgot about Lee Jae-heon for a while.
That is, until I meet this crazy patient again in the underworld.
“Nice to meet you, teacher.”
“…What….”
Quas, that is!
Lee Jae-heon appeared with a disgusting bursting sound.
“…Patient?”
I felt uncomfortable.
‘Discomfort?’
Well, Ha Seong-yoon himself didn’t know where or what he felt uncomfortable about.
However, it was awkward and bizarre, as if a new character had suddenly appeared in a well-planned script. It may be an exaggerated expression, but Lee Jae-heon, who saved me while covered in bright red monster juice, seemed like a separate monster.
“I’m still a patient now.”
“Well… it looks like that.”
And I immediately reflected on it.
What had happened so far was that the subject, a member of the Idang Group’s royal family, had a tattered body and gray eyes full of heavy confusion that helped them recognize him as a patient. What was I thinking about such a weak and difficult person?
“….”
Ha Seong-yoon survived thanks to Lee Jae-heon, and that’s how he met Jeong In-ho.
“…Boss?”
It was a chance meeting through Lee Jae-heon.
“…Didn’t I tell you to wait?”
“I came because I was worried.”
“Are you going to keep doing this, Assistant Manager Jeong? “Am I really funny?”
“That can’t be right.”
Ha Seong-yoon once again felt a sense of discomfort at the sight of Jeong In-ho smiling and conversing with Lee Jae-heon. It was like watching a play as both of them had a meaningless conversation without revealing their true feelings. It was more creepy than funny.
“Uh… over there…”
“Ah, this is the owner and the doctor who were inside the flower shop.”
Ha Seong-yoon, who was quietly watching Jeong In-ho like that, felt a strange sense of déjà vu next to the feeling of discomfort.
“….”
I once got this impression from somewhere.
‘Where was it?’
It was a little different from the feelings I felt from Jaeheon Lee, who had a similar vibe to my friend who had gone crazy.
Rather, an empty, frustrating, vague sense of irritation and anger creeps up like smoke and fills my lungs…
“It’s really nice to meet you!”
Those thoughts were interrupted by an unusually lively voice.
“I bought flowers last week, do you remember?”
“yes? Ah ah… Are you the one who bought that succulent set?”
“That’s right, it’s really nice to meet you.”
The young woman, who gave off an atmosphere so bright that it seemed odd to be seen in the secret world, was enough to break Ha Seong-yoon’s nerves. Even Lee Jae-heon felt like he had finished speaking, as the strength in his shoulders eased little by little at the sound of Kwon Yeon-hee’s sonorous voice.
However, even after that, Ha Seong-yoon’s ambiguous feelings toward Jeong In-ho continued.
“…hmm.”
To be honest, I wasn’t even aware of that strange sense of distance.
Ha Seong-yoon was a person with almost no prejudice, and even if he heard rumors about the subject, he would only refer to it, but was an honest person who would only make a proper evaluation if he met him in person and saw it with his own eyes. There was no way he could have easily realized that he felt a strange discomfort or distaste for Jeong In-ho from the moment they first met.
So it is like that.
‘That person can’t be my patient.’
There was no way a person like Jeong In-ho could be Ha Seong-yoon’s patient.
I don’t know what process went through to come to that conclusion, but anyway, Ha Seong-yoon looked at Jeong In-ho objectively. To him, Jung In-ho felt like an actor on a theater stage, not a human living in the same world.
“….”
I realized that my vague intuition was real when Jeong In-ho told me his identity, which I heard from Lee Jae-heon.
“Isn’t it funny? “When I heard that he was the main character, I almost laughed because it was so absurd.”
“It doesn’t look particularly funny.”
“Maybe it’s because it’s my story, but I feel heartbroken. “How did it end up like this?”
“Haha….”
Oh, I see.
“understand.”
It was because you were the main character.
‘I felt that distance because God made you the main character.’
In this world, or at least in the other world, there was a god. Doesn’t Jeong In-ho’s presence tell us that? Ha Seong-yoon seemed to know the identity of the sense of incongruity and déjà vu of the survivors in the other world that he had been vaguely feeling.
This was truly a theater stage.
“Jung In-ho is the main character….”
“I don’t feel like it.”
“The protagonist’s position will be decided by God.”
Shin was the director and writer, In-ho Jeong was the main character, and the survivors were props.
‘Be funny.’
Doesn’t that mean that Ha Seong-yoon himself is nothing more than a prop?
It was natural that Ha Seong-yoon, who was nothing more than a prop, felt distant from Jeong In-ho. Not seeing him as my patient and being confident that Jung In-ho would somehow be able to solve everything was a natural phenomenon.
That’s because Jung In-ho is the main character who must lead this play.
“….”
If this happens, what on earth is ‘Ha Seong-yoon’?
“…Ha Seong-yoon?”
“I’m a little tired.”
“I think I know what you mean.”
“Yes, I’m tired.”
Suddenly he wondered why I had to think like this.
‘Others don’t know anything, so why am I the only one…’
Could it be that I was punished for my disrespect for blaming God? I couldn’t be more uncomfortable with the fact that I was the only one who knew about a system that even the main character, Jung In-ho, couldn’t figure out.
If you think about it, Ha Seong-yoon’s sense was exceptionally better than that of the other survivors. Although he is not the same type as Hong Kyung-jun, I felt a strange qualm toward Jung In-ho from the first time I met him, and I kept thinking that he had been given a role. And when I felt awkward as if that role had been broken…
“…Then is there anything else you want to say?”
It was when Lee Jae-heon saved Ha Seong-yoon from a flower shop.
Ha Seong-yoon, who had encountered Jeong In-ho at a cafe when he escaped the secret world for a while, vividly remembered the memories of that time and the sense of discomfort he felt at the time.
“Thank you for listening to my story.”
“Mr. Jeong In-ho.”
“Say yes.”
“I guess we don’t get along well, do we?”
“….”
At those words, Jeong In-ho made an embarrassed expression.
If you had asked me when I was in the other world, I would have smiled silently with those pitch-black eyes, but I was able to see that this person definitely felt more comfortable in reality.
“First of all…”
Jeong In-ho, who hesitated, answered.
“I have a bad personality.”
“Me too.”
“…I guess they don’t get along because they are bad people.”
“I guess so.”
“I guess so.”
“Please enter carefully.”
“Ha Seong-yoon too.”
Ha Seong-yoon came out of the cafe and suddenly looked up at the sky.
“….”
The ceiling was so high and wide that it was almost desolate.
“…It’s absurd.”
Ha Seong-yoon should have died at the flower shop that day. I felt that confident.
Surprisingly, that fact did not have much of a shock to Ha Seong-yoon. In the first place, he was crazy enough to believe that God forced his parents to die. What could be more surprising when we realized that everything in this world is a play and we are nothing more than props? Ha Seong-yoon was a sweet, but not very sensitive person.
‘but.’
I still had questions.
“…Jaeheon Lee.”
If I really had to die, how could Jaeheon Lee save me?
Why was it only you who could do that?
* * *
“Mr. Ha Seong-yoon.”
Ha Seong-yoon woke up to the voice calling me.
“…Jaeheon Lee.”
“I guess you’re tired.”
“It’s a beautiful day.”
The temperature was quite good for a world where there was no wind and no sun. Ha Seong-yoon looked at Lee Jae-heon sitting next to him, and a smile formed on his lips like a habit.
“It looks like it didn’t work out well.”
“I didn’t feel like I was in a state to talk, so I backed off.”
“This is such a big deal.”
A heavy feeling of frustration arose behind my half-asleep, hazy mind.
“I guess I should hurry and see my patients…”
Ha Seong-yoon may be a good person, but he was not a good person.
He did countless good deeds in his life, and even though he didn’t receive that much in return, he kept moving forward. At his feet were his respected parents, behind him were his crazy friends, and in front were patients desperately looking for him. Aside from this, Ha Seong-yoon was a truly terrible person.
“Are you anxious?”
“It seems so. There was a patient who had a new surgery this time, and I couldn’t even see the progress myself. “Your mother brought some side dishes as a favor, so I’m sorry.”
“For someone who says sorry, you have a calm voice.”
“…Ah…I see.”
I sighed.
“I’m tired.”
I smiled as I gave a belated answer.
Since I didn’t know everything about the god and the main character, I just wanted to go back.
(Continued in the next part)
