Ch.5249 – Sikhye

[Connection failed, switching to voice input after beep]

“Haaaaaah… f*ck why won’t they answer the phone!”

Seo No-eul threw his phone onto the floor in frustration.

It had been an hour since his mother went into surgery, but there was still no contact from his brother Seo Ma-ru.

“F*ck… f*ck…”

That Friday in March was nothing special for Seo Ma-ru, Seo Yu-na, or Seo No-eul himself.

Since it was Friday, there were many in-person delivery orders even during lunch, so No-eul thought he was having good luck.

With today’s earnings looking decent, he decided they would all gather as a family and make neobiani, Yu-na’s favorite.

Of course, no matter how much he earned, it was nothing compared to what Ma-ru could make in half a day, but someone needed to stay by their mother’s side to care for her.

There was no better job than delivery for frequently going in and out of the house.

Maybe mother could eat the meat if it was ground very finely.

“Mom, I’m home! How about neobiani for dinner? Mom…? Mom!!!”

His mother’s stomach was severely swollen like a pregnant woman’s, looking like it might burst at any moment. Her complexion had turned so green that it was hard to believe red blood still flowed beneath her skin.

Seo No-eul still couldn’t shake the horrific 30 minutes from his mind.

It was a very rare symptom that appeared in late-stage multiple sclerosis patients.

The doctor admitted that if the paramedics hadn’t informed him about the multiple sclerosis, he would have certainly mistaken it for intestinal obstruction.

“We’ve prevented the acute relapse with corticosteroid treatment, but we can’t guarantee when or how the disease will strike next.”

A disease that was incurable from the start didn’t require major surgery.

But Seo No-eul couldn’t curse at the doctors and nurses who had barely kept his mother alive.

After all, they were the ones who saved his mother.

No-eul turned away from his mother, who had multiple IV needles inserted in the hospital room.

“How long… how much longer can my mother live?”

“We can’t know for sure. It could be three days, it could be a month, it could be a year.

But as a doctor, I must inform you that it won’t be any longer than that…

So it would be best for the family to prepare yourselves mentally.”

“A year… just a year?”

“The patient has already developed severe steroid resistance due to prolonged drug treatment, so anything more would be a lethal dose.

From now on, the next time—that is, the second time you come to the hospital—we can’t make any promises.”

Seo No-eul felt his heart sink.

He hadn’t even become an adult yet and hadn’t been able to repay his mother for anything. She couldn’t pass away so meaninglessly.

Moreover, Yu-na was only eight years old, far too young.

No-eul wasn’t confident he could give the child the affection she needed at an age when she craved parental love.

“Just a year…?”

“Seo Yu-na? How did you get to the hospital so quickly?”

“Mom only has a year to live? Why…? Why did this happen to our mom! Waaaaaaaaah!”

“Yu-na, please calm down.”

“I can’t live without Mom! Mom, please wake up. Please, I’m begging you. I’ll really listen to you every day and study hard, so please look at me!”

“Mom needs to rest now, let’s talk outside…”

“Waaaaaaaaah!”

Looking at Yu-na’s appearance, it didn’t seem like she had walked here.

But with her transit card that only worked on certain routes, she would have had to walk quite a distance from the last stop to reach the hospital.

It was too early for her to have gone home, read the note, and come straight here.

“Who brought you to the hospital?”

“Sob… hic… Oppa, is that really important right now?”

“I was worried you might have asked some strange person!”

“Name… Name called a taxi for me. My friend…”

“Friend? How did your friend know to give you a ride?”

“Home… I went home with Name and no one was there. Hic… Then I saw Oppa’s note and came right away.”

Only then did Seo No-eul notice a child wearing the same uniform as Yu-na sitting across the waiting room.

Name, was it?

Seo No-eul had heard that name before.

There was a day when Yu-na had cried particularly sadly.

She had expressed her frustration about a transfer student who ranked first in the aptitude evaluation at her academy.

‘Is that the child?’

No-eul’s first impression of Name was that a person’s eyes could truly lack luster.

She seemed to be living in a world with a black and white filter applied.

Rather than gloomy, the right description would be… profound.

* * *

“Here, do you like sikhye?”

Yu-na’s brother sat next to me and bought me a canned drink from the vending machine.

“Thank you.”

“No problem. I should be thanking you.”

“What about Yu-na?”

“She didn’t want to leave her mom’s side, so we finally set up a cot for her. She’s probably sleeping by now. If you can’t open that, give it to me and I’ll open it for you.”

There was a crisp, refreshing sound, but it was quickly drowned out by the commotion of the emergency room.

Anyone who has been to an emergency room knows that it can be described as orderly chaos.

Occasionally there were screams and shouts, but they were quickly suppressed by hospital staff, forcing everyone to hold their breath and restrain their emotions.

The same was true for Yu-na’s brother, Seo No-eul.

The sikhye was cool but not very sweet.

“I really appreciate it. My brother wasn’t answering his phone at all, so I was worried about how to bring Yu-na here.

Actually, I was planning to tell her to wait at home, but knowing my sister, I knew she wouldn’t listen and would come looking anyway.”

Seo No-eul explained why he had left the note.

“How is your mother doing?”

“Haah, I don’t know… The disease has never struck this severely before. I don’t know, I just don’t know anything anymore…”

“You must be very distressed.”

What emotion underlies his words? Resignation? Regret?

“Yu-na was going to walk to the hospital.”

“Walk? I’m sure I gave her a transit card.”

“There was no balance on it.”

“Why doesn’t she recharge it when Ma-ru gives her allowance… She must have had a hard time walking from school too. She would have had to climb that hill on foot.”

Seo No-eul scolded his sister.

Does this person really know nothing about his sister?

“Your name is Name, right? How is Yu-na doing at the academy? Is she getting along well?”

“What does Yu-na tell you?”

“She says she enjoys going to school every day. The teachers are nice, she has many friends, and learning magic is fun. Sometimes she cries under her blanket when studying gets tough, but her grades are as good as she wants them to be, so she seems generally satisfied.”

“…”

“Oh right, Yu-na mentioned you once. You ranked first in the second-year aptitude evaluation, didn’t you? Please take good care of our Yu-na.”

I unconsciously gripped the can tighter.

The empty can crumpled easily under my weak grip.

“Yu-na has never taken the bus to the academy, not even once.”

Seo Yu-na… she wore a mask not only at school but at home as well.

Neither school nor home had become a safe haven for her.

It was disheartening to think about how this young child had endured an entire school year.

“To save 2,100 won per day, she walked a 1.5-hour distance round trip and climbed 519 stairs every day.”

“She walked every day…?”

“Many friends, you say? Well, I rarely heard her speak except during class.”

“…”

“From the moment she arrives at school until she leaves, she doesn’t say a word and just sits studying all day.

She’s thrown up in the school bathroom several times after lunch.

Do you really think Yu-na is adapting well to the academy?”

During the potion incident, when I put my finger in her mouth to fill the magic circle parameters for examination, her oral acidity was too low.

I could tell that stomach acid had come up through her esophagus, causing inflammatory damage.

Considering that she frequently vomited in the bathroom, it was highly likely she had stress-induced reflux esophagitis.

“Yu-na has been deeply hurt by the things you all hide from her, even if it was meant to protect her.

Not telling Yu-na things, and not trying to learn about Yu-na. I think this is wrong.”

I understand that her brothers are putting their lives on the line to restore their family.

But to give her a few coins and not pay attention until their sister reached this state…

That was fundamentally wrong.

It’s similar to why this sikhye isn’t sweet at all.

All food and beverages supplied to hospitals are made with reduced sugar or salt content for the patients’ sake.

But those who drink it without knowing this fact would just think the product is defective.

While they might have thought they were acting in Yu-na’s best interest, the pain she endured was certainly not insignificant.

At this rate, Yu-na would continue to spend meaningless time with eyes that see nothing and ears that hear nothing.

“Haaaaaah…”

Seo No-eul sighed, clutching his head.

Even though Yu-na’s younger brother was one of the two pillars supporting the family along with her older brother, his face still looked young even to me.

At most, he was seventeen or eighteen.

Too young to take care of a family and be responsible for the future.

His brother was only a year older, so he had just become an adult.

Happy families are all alike, but every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.

And that unhappiness might not be anyone’s fault.

Unless someone else broke the chain of misfortune, they couldn’t escape the vicious cycle.

“Yu-na likes her brothers the most and is proud of them.”

“I didn’t know Yu-na was struggling so much… I just thought she was a bit whiny, but she was sending signals all along. And I didn’t even realize…”

“So don’t blame yourself.”

Despite her immaturity, Yu-na wouldn’t fail to understand those feelings.

“Didn’t you say you wanted to be a basketball player?”

“Yu-na said that too? I didn’t have much talent anyway, so being a basketball player was just… mental victory. I was just using our family situation as an excuse for my lack of talent.”

“Yu-na is still cheering for that dream.”

“Forget it. As long as Yu-na attends the academy, I need to stay at home. We don’t know how much longer Mom will live. I should do my best while she’s still here… while she’s still here…”

He explained that to care for his mother, who was essentially a vegetative state from the neck down, a caregiver needed to be constantly present.

Especially important was turning her body at least once every two hours to prevent bedsores.

“May I ask what the diagnosis is?”

“Multiple sclerosis, they say.”

Multiple sclerosis was a disease I was familiar with from my research at the magic tower.

According to my memories from the previous world, when the corruption of [Sloth] begins, the ‘Medusa’ phenomenon is first widely observed around the world.

Plants wither away, and animals and humans become rigid.

Lou Gehrig’s disease, Parkinson’s disease, and multiple sclerosis.

Humans who couldn’t even properly understand their own bodies had virtually no chance of stopping the unknown corruption.

That’s why humans rejected the contaminated and sometimes executed them.

Just like how protagonists in apocalypse movies kill zombies without any guilt.

“What did the doctor prescribe?”

“Huh? Something like cor-steroid, I think. Why?”

“Corticosteroid. It can accelerate the recovery time, but it has no effect on the degree of recovery. Could I possibly visit your mother’s room?”