Episode 78:
His greed was his nature and means of life.
Therefore, it was not very curious to Lee Jae-heon whether this greed was something that was attached to him from birth or whether he learned it instinctively in order to live his own life. It wasn’t a particularly worthwhile story.
Why on earth should we question the origin of something that will be with us for a lifetime and not be abandoned?
This would lead to a better life.
* * *
A calm, subdued atmosphere.
President Garam Yoon was quietly looking at the red-tinted bonfire alone under the burning black sky. Silence passed by my ears.
Suddenly she rolled her eyes and looked at Manager Lee Jae-heon.
“….”
The shape of a person sleeping quietly came into view.
Is it because I saw it in this particularly colorless world, or is it because so much blood was shed? Director Lee Jae-heon’s skin was so pale that his wounds were especially visible.
He was clearly breathing, but it was so faint that you wouldn’t notice it unless you looked closely. Even a quick glance at the dark red shirt gave off the smell of blood, and the vest and suit pants, which no one would have thought were expensive, were crumpled from the uproar.
Nevertheless, his face was so calm that Yoon Garam blinked.
‘…I feel like I’m dead.’
I thought that perhaps that person would still have the same attitude even when it was time for him to die.
I haven’t seen Director Lee Jae-heon for that long. But should I say that it is an instinctive feeling? It felt like even if his whole body was on fire, he would just lie down on the grass and face death rather than struggle. I will die quietly like I am now.
Because he was like that when I first saw him at the flower shop.
“….”
Yoon Garam, who was purring her lips, gently touched the knit that covered the back of her hand with her other hand.
She always wore clothes that covered her entire body. Spring was slowly coming, so I wore knits, but until the winter just before, I was wearing thick, long sweaters. Regular customers of the flower shop often felt puzzled by Yoon Garam’s fashion.
No matter how hot the day gets, she doesn’t wear shorts. Do not wear short sleeves. Even if I wore it, I always went to work at the flower shop with a cardigan on top. She always made excuses for wearing it because it was very cold, but she didn’t know that people didn’t listen to her.
So I slowly picked up the knit and looked at the back of my bare hands.
“…hmm.”
It was full of terrible scars.
She swallowed hard and quickly covered it up.
‘I should have had the surgery at the hospital a long time ago.’
It was a burn scar I got when I was in high school.
At that time, she suffered serious injuries in the fire and had to be hospitalized for a while. The large burn scar I got at that time covered most of my body and still remains to this day.
Her close friends who saw it urged her to get skin transplant surgery, but Garam Yoon did not do so. It was because I didn’t want to go to that length of time to erase the scars that were now just rough brown skin. Of course, I didn’t say it because it wouldn’t be understood.
But when things turned out like this, I got a little worried.
‘I guess I should wash it sometime.’
For some reason, it hasn’t gotten as dirty as I thought even after a long time, but I can’t keep cowering like this. Minimal effort was needed for hygiene.
The water in the small lake has been determined not to be dangerous, and many people, including her, are going in and out of the lake to check if there are monsters in it. If things continued like this, I would probably have to wash my body there soon.
In that case, no matter how much I thought about it, it was impossible for me to wash alone. When someone went into a small lake to wash properly, there was no way they would leave their defenseless companions unattended and not protect them, and it would not have been easy to repeat washing and protecting them one by one.
There would certainly come a day when she would be able to wash with other same-sex colleagues, but when that time came, Garam Yoon would not be able to hide the scars on her body. It’s not a scar small enough to be hidden.
“…I wish I had erased it before…”
A very small voice dispersed in the air.
I didn’t really look for it seriously, and I don’t know if modern technology could erase a scar this large, but I decided to go to the hospital several times. I told you to at least get a good prescription. After falling into this world, didn’t I end up showing my scars for no reason?
Actually, it didn’t matter if he saw the scar itself, but if he asked about the story about it, Garam Yoon would be in quite a bit of trouble. Even if you say you don’t want to talk and that’s okay.
“….”
Then, Manager Lee Jae-heon, who was sleeping as if dead, came into view again.
‘…are you insensitive to pain?’
Although he hadn’t seen that person for that long, Garam Yoon thought that way. Director Lee Jae-heon was quite insensitive to the many and diverse sufferings in the world.
Otherwise, there was no way he could have behaved so smoothly.
‘Not only about his condition… but also about my condition.’
Garam Yoon crouched down, slowly scratching his ears.
From her perspective, Manager Lee Jae-heon didn’t seem to place much value on the pain he was feeling. Of course, it could be that he was just holding back to make it look like that, but his actions were full of a sense of discomfort.
It was like that when I first saw it at the flower shop. The shirt, which was supposed to be white, was stained dark red at the shoulders, and I found out later that the calves were not in good condition either. Later, when I heard the story from another group member, they said that it happened while they were trying to save Kang Min-ah. Because I was attacked by a monster.
If you just listen to the story, the person is really good and nice, but if you just look at it, it’s not like that at all. Despite the fact that the actions and words were separate, there was a strange atmosphere felt in the scene itself. This is the feeling of discomfort that can be felt when staring at a broken porcelain doll that you sometimes see in horror movies.
And it seemed like she wasn’t the only one who felt that sense of discomfort.
Not only the four people who left the company with Manager Lee Jae-heon, but also teacher Ha Seong-yoon who was with her at the flower shop. And students Park Da-young and Park Da-hoon, who joined us at the park, also seemed to know.
Director Lee Jae-heon’s actions were certainly very sacrificial and noble, but…
‘…I was scared.’
Garam Yoon felt fear from him.
It was similar to what I felt from the monster that resembled stained glass that I saw at a flower shop. The senseless death that crumbled like thin glass was very similar to the silence exuded by Director Lee Jae-heon.
It certainly all seemed plausible on the surface. It wasn’t strange what he said. It was a little strange that the way he spoke sometimes came and went, but it wasn’t so weird. At a quick glance, Manager Lee Jae-heon was just a kind-hearted adult who was dishonest in dealing with people.
‘So… the students must follow that much.’
Garam Yoon’s gaze passed by the two students hovering around Director Jaeheon Lee and returned again. It seemed like he was quite sensitive, even though he was pretending not to be, so I thought there was no need to make him worry.
She had a fondness for children. It wasn’t much different for high school students who were about to become adults. Garam Yoon liked the pure ignorance that only they could have and liked the energy that came from such ignorance. Children instinctively knew who was a good person for them.
So, I’m not saying that Manager Lee Jae-heon is bad. He was clearly a good person and a good adult. At the very least, doesn’t it mean that you have a certain level of responsibility and ability to be considerate and stand by so that someone can rest when they’re having a hard time?
I’ll say it again, Garam Yoon didn’t hate Director Jaeheon Lee.
But I was scared.
‘It’s like…’
That thing
doesn’t seem to be human.
I thought it was a clever monster imitating an ordinary human.
His usual appearance, when nothing was going on, seemed like he was just an ordinary old man. To be precise, he seemed like a person who didn’t know how to express his good feelings honestly, so he vented them in a clumsy way. It made the viewer smile for no reason.
But sometimes, very occasionally. When he slowly blinks his eyes or sweeps his mouth with one hand. Or when you squeeze it or roll your eyes.
When you look at a place where there is nothing with a blank gaze that resembles death.
It looked like a malfunctioning doll.
‘…Is everyone like that when they go completely crazy?’
I was curious.
Director Lee Jae-heon himself seemed to be trying hard to hide it, but some of the party members seemed to have already noticed. That person was already in a state that could hardly be called sane.
This was the way he accepted pain as value rather than pain. That was how injuries were calculated as damages. This was the case sometimes when he seemed to stumble over common sense that everyone probably knew, or when he calmly brought up false stories without knowing anything about himself. I couldn’t help but feel a sense of discomfort.
Of course, as a stranger, Garam Yoon had no idea why he had ended up in that situation, but one thing was certain.
“…I guess it hurt a lot.”
It must have hurt a lot.
“yes?”
“Hands. “I was in the fire for so long…”
“The doctor treated me, so I’ll be okay.”
“I guess so?”
It hurts so much that you don’t even know it hurts.
‘That’s why I didn’t scream.’
In front of Garam Yoon’s eyes, Manager Lee Jae-heon’s hand was depicted melting like candle wax flowing down. In fact, the injuries weren’t that extreme, but at least in her opinion, they were decent injuries.
The hand, which was bright red and quickly dripping juice, had many shortcomings to be considered a human hand. Or, there were a lot of things that were excessive. Even if some people said it belonged to a monster, there would probably be no one who would deny it.
It would have been painful if the pain sensation had not completely disappeared, but how did I not scream even once? I was too distracted to think about it at the time, but Manager Lee Jae-heon, who had his hand in the fire, remained silent the whole time. The face was probably blank. With a face that doesn’t even know what I’ve done.
If you think about it, it wasn’t a very surprising fact.
‘It was like that at the flower shop too.’
His ankle was burned by being wrapped in vines, and even though it was melting, Manager Lee Jae-heon remained calm. Or he just frowned and brushed it off as if it were dust. If a wound like that had been inflicted on me, she would have forgotten her face and her age and would not have woken up in tears. It was that big of a wound.
Even if a person like that were to be burned to death, he would just frown a few times and then die.
‘It will be very quiet.’
Suddenly, a pitch-black flame appeared in my mind.
Under the dark night sky, I thought of a tree house burning brilliantly, consumed by fire. Even if you lock them in a log cabin, set a fire outside, and block the door, they will suffocate to death from the smoke and their entire bodies will turn to ashes, but they will still be peaceful. If it’s a blocked door, I’ll knock on it a couple of times. If it’s a locked window, if it doesn’t break, I’ll be done.
That’s why Garam Yoon felt as if Jaeheon Lee’s existence didn’t exist in the world.
‘How can something like that exist?’
It wasn’t like I had seen something that shouldn’t have been there, but it felt like I’d seen something that I didn’t know why it was there or how it came into being. How much pain must a person have to be floating in the air like that?
What if something so foreign and quiet could burn up in a fire?…
I suddenly raised my head and looked at the bonfire.
“….”
The sound of sparks fluttering is heard.
At that moment,
I realized.
“…ah.”
…I also
thought, ‘Am I crazy?’
Have I gone crazy?
In my ears, I heard not the noise of a wooden pole burning, but the sound of bright flowers distorting in the wind. It was a truly absurd feeling.
Piece by piece, sharp scarlet-colored pieces pierced my ears.
I laughed.
-I’m going to die.
“…under.”
Garam Yoon knew.
Probably at the flower shop at that time. If Director Lee Jae-heon had not helped, Dr. Ha Seong-yoon would have died.
I felt it really keenly. No matter what I do, the image of my flower turning into a monster and trying to kill the person I admire never disappears from my eyes.
If you lower your eyelids, your ears will hurt instead. A rich, tangy sweetness clings to it. A soft and nostalgic whisper clung to me, resembling the honey I could taste when I picked a flower as a child.
This soggy, stinging scent…
-I’m going to die.
“….”
-I will kill you.
Auditory hallucinations.
My voice from my younger days rang out.
* * *
A few minutes later,
Manager Lee Jae-heon woke up coughing up blood.
“Ugh… Ugh cluck.”
“….”
“Heo-eok-eup…”
Spitting out a bucket of bright red blood.
Bleeding from mouth, nose and ears. Scratching the floor with one hand and trying to cover up the blood that was spilling out with the other. He was cracking his voice in a rough voice, as if he had been sandpapered for a while… and
glaring at us with a distorted gaze.
“…Boss?”
The gesture of standing up without any hesitation.
“go away.”
It didn’t really look like a living person.
He didn’t look like ‘Director Lee Jae-heon’ who was protecting us until now.
“No, no, no, that’s not it…”
“Chief.”
“Run away.”
“….”
“If you don’t want to be left behind.”
…The howling of a dog was heard not far away.
“Run away quickly.”
It was the sound of someone opening a curtain.
