More Than Coincidence, Fate (4)
From the morning onward, Jung Hee-sung was restless, like a dog whose chew toy had been taken away.
After pacing around the bed in a distracting circle, he strode toward the door.
With a solemn expression, he placed his hand on the doorknob.
But before he could even put strength into it, the doorknob turned.
As he awkwardly stepped backward, an empty hallway came into view.
He lowered his gaze a little.
No, quite a lot.
He saw a round crown of hair and black eyes like small pebbles.
Jung Hee-sung’s face lit up brightly.
“Do-hyun!”
The child flinched at the intense welcome.
“Were you going somewhere?”
“Where would I go?”
“Weren’t you about to leave just now?”
“Ah. I was waiting for you.”
“You were waiting for me?”
Jung Hee-sung saw joy slowly spread across the child’s face.
The black gaze looking up at him, the pale face faintly sparkling with life, was almost blind in its happiness.
His worry that the child had been angry, disappointed, and would never come back again collapsed helplessly in front of that pure emotion.
Like a dam built with faulty construction, it crumbled, and in its place, a new question filled him.
How do you like me?
Because we have the same illness?
Because we’re both Asian?
He knew very well how weak those reasons were for someone to like him.
But he did not feel like asking the child.
Driven to the edge of life, he had come all the way here and finally found a little warmth.
Rather than waste time doubting the reason, he wanted to enjoy that small warmth as much as he could, even if only for a short while.
“Hyung, do you like it when I come visit?”
“Yeah.”
He exhaled and ruffled the child’s hair.
The child had clearly been upset the day before, yet he showed no sign of it and only smiled softly.
As usual, the child sat close to the bed and opened his book.
His faintly flushed face looked happier than usual.
The child acted as if he had forgotten what happened yesterday.
Even though there was no way that clever, sharp little head of his had forgotten.
In front of this overly mature child, something childish and reckless rose inside Jung Hee-sung.
Once this little kid hears the story.
Once he learns that I’m really nothing special.
Then.
Will he still like me?
Jung Hee-sung stared at the child’s pale yet soft-looking cheek, then opened his mouth on impulse.
“It’s been a year since I let go of the violin.”
Pathetic Jung Hee-sung.
Trying to test a child’s affection.
He had clearly wasted his age.
Or maybe, because he was near death, early senility had found him.
Even as he coldly criticized himself, Jung Hee-sung continued speaking.
“For some strange reason, the more I played the violin, the worse my body got. At first, I thought maybe I was imagining it, but later, even the doctor told me not to play.”
At the sudden story, Do-hyun’s hands began to wander.
He placed his hands on the page, lifted them, then eventually clasped them tightly together.
His black eyes trembled with agitation.
Jung Hee-sung let out a faint laugh.
“But honestly, all of that is just an excuse. I simply found a reason not to play.”
The eyes that had been wavering with unrest carefully turned toward him.
Jung Hee-sung read worry inside them.
That unfamiliar sensation tickled something inside him.
Jung Hee-sung cleared his throat for no reason.
“Well, it’s not as if I started because I liked it. I only did it because I had to. But as I kept doing it, later it just became a habit.”
He had planned to wrap up the story around there.
“It means you worked hard enough for it to become a habit.”
If the child had not said that.
He knew it was just something the child had said casually.
And yet, pathetically, he wanted to refute it.
“I was hospitalized four years ago. I was performing back then, and suddenly it felt like my whole body was going to burst apart from pain. I collapsed as soon as the performance ended. But they said it might have been because of playing the violin. The doctor said it might be stress-related. Once I found out I ended up like this because of the violin, it became hard to continue. If you were me, wouldn’t you lose every bit of affection for it too?”
Then he realized his mistake.
Because Do-hyun looked extremely flustered.
Self-loathing rose inside him.
What am I doing to a child?
Trying to smooth over the situation, he forced his voice into a lighter tone.
“What I mean is, I wasn’t trying to deceive you yesterday. It just wasn’t important, so I didn’t say anything. In the first place, it’s already been four years since I was active as a violinist, and more than a year since I even played. It’s in the past, so I simply didn’t bother mentioning it. I didn’t know you’d feel hurt. I’m sorry.”
Even so, Do-hyun’s expression did not soften.
As the silence stretched longer, Jung Hee-sung grew anxious.
His self-loathing deepened.
As if testing a child wasn’t bad enough, now he had tried to take out his frustration on him too.
You’ve really lost your mind, Jung Hee-sung.
He felt so pathetic he could die.
Do-hyun looked at hyung, who was always smiling lazily, now hanging his head low.
The confusion that had risen on his pale face gradually faded.
His black eyes sank quietly.
He lied again.
Do-hyun was calmly certain of it.
That did not mean the things Jung Hee-sung had gone through were lies.
Those must have been true.
What was hidden behind a false mask was the emotion he had felt.
There was no way Do-hyun could not know.
“Hyung, you shouldn’t act.”
“What?”
Jung Hee-sung’s head shot up.
His face clearly showed the thought, What on earth is this supposed to mean?
In truth, Jung Hee-sung was not an easy person to read.
He was always armed with a smile.
And his acting was not as terrible as Do-hyun said.
His attitude was very natural.
Unless someone watched him extremely carefully, unless someone remembered every single expression without letting even one slip by, they would not notice.
In other words, unless it was someone like Do-hyun.
“Your expression. It all shows.”
Jung Hee-sung spoke with a confused face.
“I’ve never heard that before.”
His words were probably true, but Do-hyun pretended not to know.
At least, unlike hyung, he was not lying.
Because to Do-hyun’s eyes, it really was all visible.
He also truly meant it when he said hyung should not act.
He might be good at controlling the muscles of his face, but he could not hide his eyes at all.
How strange.
Were there no people around hyung who looked into his eyes?
If they had seen his eyes, then no matter how sly his expression was, they would have known his true feelings.
Do-hyun said with confusion,
“Hyung, you’re good at hiding your expression, but you can’t hide your eyes at all.”
He asked back in disbelief.
“I can’t?”
“Yes. And when I look at your eyes, I can tell. Hyung, you like the violin.”
Jung Hee-sung, who had been wearing a face as if wondering what strange thing this child would say next, frowned around his eyes.
“I said I hate it.”
“If you’re going to say something like that, at least cover your eyes first.”
Jung Hee-sung flinched.
He really seemed about to raise his hand to cover his eyes, but Do-hyun spoke before he could.
“Hyung. I don’t care if you lie.”
Jung Hee-sung let out a long sigh.
In a slightly resigned tone, he asked,
“Then why are you doing this?”
At those words, Do-hyun, who had been speaking so well until now, froze.
“Did I upset you?”
“What if you did?”
“I’m sorry. I just….”
The small face crumpled.
It was a face that snapped Jung Hee-sung, who had been trying to act mean, back to his senses.
Just as Jung Hee-sung was about to say it was fine, that he had only been joking,
“You didn’t look happy at all when you were lying, hyung. You looked like you were having a hard time instead. That’s why… that’s why I said it.”
Contrary to what he had originally intended, Jung Hee-sung could not say anything.
Do-hyun looked at him, frozen in place, with desperate eyes.
“I don’t like it when you’re having a hard time, hyung. That’s why I said it. But did I make things harder for you?”
A pure sincerity without a single speck of pretense or falsehood.
The emotion that struck him head-on without even being wrapped up was too clear to deny any longer.
Affection.
Jung Hee-sung could not attach any other word to that feeling besides affection.
This child had been like that from the beginning.
From the beginning, he had approached Jung Hee-sung without hesitation and given him affection for no reason.
Did he know or not that Jung Hee-sung was a strange adult he had only known for a week?
He looked so clever, yet the things he did were so foolish that it made Jung Hee-sung worry.
Surely he wouldn’t follow someone just because they offered him candy, right?
He would have to properly warn him later.
At this rate, he couldn’t even let him go anywhere alone.
And….
And, he was afraid.
He had thought he did not need to know the reason.
He had thought he simply needed to greedily enjoy the warmth that had come to him.
But now, not knowing the reason frightened him.
Because one day, it might disappear without reason too.
That was when it happened.
“!”
Do-hyun’s small hand settled over Jung Hee-sung’s hand.
Timidly, he curled his hand into a loose fist and placed it on the back of Hee-sung’s hand.
At that faint warmth, Jung Hee-sung was startled.
Do-hyun narrowed the distance between the chair and the bed every day, but he did not touch him.
Other than when he had supported him, this was the first time.
And though it was such a small thing, warmth filled his heart completely.
Even though the pale child’s hand was not that warm, he felt a ticklish heat spread through his chest.
And with that warmth,
“Ha.”
The wall that had been slowly crumbling without him even realizing it, until only its shape remained, collapsed completely.
“Ha, haha. Hahaha!”
Jung Hee-sung flipped his hand over and held the small hand tightly, laughing like a madman.
Was this a gift given to him at the end of his tiresome life because he was too pitiful?
“Why did you only appear now?”
The child blinked while his hand was caught inescapably in Hee-sung’s.
His face clearly said he had no idea what this meant.
Jung Hee-sung shook his head and held the small hand more firmly.
The wall that had protected him was gone now.
But as he held this small hand, he felt like everything would be all right.
If this warmth tried to disappear, he could just hold it tightly so it could not.
Even if the child truly wanted to leave… then he would educate him properly, telling him not to follow anyone even if they offered him candy, and then let him go.
But would this child really do that?
Even now, he acted like a duckling following its mother duck.
He looked at Do-hyun as if the sight were dazzling, then opened his mouth.
“No.”
“Yes?”
“How could you make things hard for me? No.”
Only then did Do-hyun realize that it was a belated answer, and his expression brightened.
Seeing the child smile in relief at just one sentence from him, Jung Hee-sung’s mouth opened on its own.
“It’s a boring old story. Do you want to hear it?”
Do-hyun nodded.
As if reminiscing, Jung Hee-sung tapped the bed a couple of times with his fingers.
When he first collapsed, he had not felt much of anything.
He had known even before then that his body was not in good condition.
So it had simply felt like something that was bound to happen had finally happened.
Without thinking much, he did as the hospital told him and played around alone with his violin.
The change came two years later.
The doctor’s words that a rare disease was suspected.
A disease with no known cause and no treatment, one that only one other person in the world besides him had.
Even that was fine.
Because he thought he had done enough.
If this was the ending given to him, then he would simply accept it.
But the doctor’s advice that it would be better to stop playing the violin was not something he could just brush past like that.
“It took up most of my life. Whether I liked it or hated it, it was always there.”
After hesitating a little, he confessed as if letting out a sigh.
“It wasn’t about liking it or hating it. The violin was simply a part of me. Without it, my life didn’t make sense. If I said I was fine after a part of me was torn away, that would be a lie. But everyone says that, don’t they? You have to be alive first before anything else can come next. I thought about it deeply too, and no matter how I looked at it, my life seemed more important than the violin.”
He laughed briefly.
“Well, I made it sound grand, but in the end, it’s an obvious story. Giving up one thing for the sake of another is something you can’t avoid in life. It’s disappointing, but there’s nothing I can do, right?”
“Why do you keep lying?”
Jung Hee-sung felt genuinely wronged.
“What? I went through all that effort to tell you, and you call it a lie? Why would I lie?”
“That’s also a lie.”
“How do you know that?”
“Because I have something I like too.”
“What does that—”
“I like ‘playing.’”
Do-hyun swallowed a breath.
It was his first time revealing what was inside him to someone, yet strangely, the words came out without hesitation.
“‘Playing’ is copying the characters in books. I cry, laugh, get angry, feel happy, and feel sad by following them. Then their emotions become mine, their thoughts become mine, and their lives become mine.”
Whenever Do-hyun did his “playing,” he felt as if something dynamic, something sparkling in many colors, was born inside his empty self.
That was why Do-hyun liked playing.
Because it felt as if the things he had seen in the expressions of passersby while sitting on the bench had appeared inside him too.
Because it felt like he had become part of them.
“Sometimes, very rarely, Benjamin doesn’t leave my hospital room. On those days, Benjamin talks less, and his face becomes dark.”
Jung Hee-sung curled his hand into a fist.
An ominous feeling surrounded him.
“Benjamin doesn’t usually talk about things that aren’t related to my illness, but on days like that, he asks me if there’s anything I want to do. He also suggests that I call my parents. In those moments, do you know what I wished for?”
His heart felt as if it had stopped.
Room 703.
A young child lying in bed and the doctor looking down at him with a sorrowful expression appeared vividly in his mind.
Immediately after, a terrible pain rose as if his heart were being wrung out.
But he could not show his sadness outwardly.
Because the child was smiling.
So brightly.
With a face that shone more than anything.
“Playing. I thought I wanted to open my eyes again in the morning and play.”
To Do-hyun, that was what “liking” meant.
And so, Do-hyun guessed.
Hyung must be the same.
Because when he said he had collapsed because of the violin, an emotion too deep and intense to be compared to resentment swirled in his eyes.
“Even if tomorrow is my last day, I want to play today. It’s the same for you, right, hyung? You want to play the violin.”
Jung Hee-sung was overwhelmed by the black eyes filled with certainty that pierced into him.
It felt as if those eyes had pierced not only his body, but even his soul, and he could not move a finger.
The child, who had rendered him completely powerless, suddenly stood from his seat and pushed a book into his arms.
Jung Hee-sung blankly watched as the child used his hand as a bookstand and flipped through the pages.
When the child’s hand moved away, his gaze fell to the white paper.
Shakespeare’s Macbeth.
It was the title of the book the child had brought to his hospital room and had been reading today.
In other words, it was not the book Hee-sung had been reading, but the one the child had been reading.
Even more shocking was the fact that when he had told the child to try reading something a little more fun and exciting because he always read difficult and complicated books, the book he brought was Macbeth.
Where on earth did this little kid’s taste go wrong?
And why do I even find that strange taste cute?
At that moment, he sensed movement as Do-hyun got down from the chair.
When he lifted his head, he saw Do-hyun standing a little distance away from the bed.
Are you leaving already?
Jung Hee-sung was about to reflexively blurt out his disappointment, but he froze at a strange sense of discomfort.
Was fluorescent light always this pale?
The light flowing over Do-hyun’s white, pale skin was so cold it felt unnatural.
His gaze climbed over the child’s dry-looking neck and cheeks before reaching his eyes.
They were cloudy.
The intense gaze that had pierced through him was nowhere to be found.
Instead, those eyes were hazy all over, like a pale white fog.
His unfocused pupils wandered through the empty air.
