episode_0026

I bolted out of the house as soon as Yang Mother’s words ended. Leaving the guests behind and emptying the house was considered rude, but I… I couldn’t bring myself to care because a man named Han Eunseok had died.

As if possessed, I ran towards the house where the past me, Han Eunseok, used to live before becoming Joo Eunhye.

Passing by the accident site, a very familiar street caught my eye.

Lost in the strangely familiar scenery that I had never noticed before, I stumbled upon the friends from the time when I was Han Eunseok, right at the place where I had knocked down the guy my girlfriend was fooling around with and slapped the face of the girlfriend who betrayed me.

I wanted to approach them and engage in meaningless conversation like before, but the current me, Joo Eunhye, was a complete stranger as Han Eunseok.

Unaware of my complicated gaze, my friends walked away without exchanging a word, lost in their own thoughts.

Distracted by the unfamiliar atmosphere created by my friends, I forgot about going back to the house where I used to live in the past and followed them with a widened gap.

Crossing a major intersection and passing over a highway, I arrived at a funeral home near a university hospital.

It was a lie, I believed Han Eunseok was not dead, but as soon as I set foot here, that belief shattered into pieces.

“I… really died…”

Taking a seat in a corner, I scanned the faces of the people filling the tables, one by one, and began to feel the reality of my death sinking in.

Unexpectedly, so many people had come to my funeral. Even though we were not close friends and maintained a certain distance, everyone gathered here had a sad expression on their faces.

Even my ex-girlfriends, from the ones I played around with to the one who betrayed me before becoming Joo Eunhye, came and shed tears.

“Hello?”

At that moment, a man approached me as I watched the tears of my ex-girlfriends.

Raising my head, I recognized him as my homeroom teacher from high school second grade.

“Oh… Hello…”

I tried to get up to greet him, but my legs refused to move. Despite my rudeness, the teacher kindly placed a bowl of Yukgaejang in front of me.

In this atmosphere, I couldn’t bring myself to refuse, feeling like I had done something terribly wrong to the teacher.

Kneeling with my head bowed, staring at the cooling bowl of Yukgaejang, the teacher said nothing.

Hoping that he would recognize me as his student, Han Eunseok, my expectations vanished when the teacher suddenly left due to a commotion.

“You people are animals…?!”

Turning my gaze towards the commotion, I saw two men fighting in front of my portrait.

One man was a friend from elementary school who had been in the same school and class with me, while the other man, with his head bowed and being held by the collar, was my brother.

“Sorry…”

Without even looking me in the eye, my brother Junseok apologized for something. Seeing his apologetic stance, my friend clenched his fist even tighter around his collar.

‘Hyung…?’

Han Junseok. My brother who used to be Han Eunseok.

“I’m sorry…”

Junseok, unable to meet my eyes, only managed to utter words of apology. Seeing this, my friend, even more enraged, tightened his grip on Junseok’s collar.

“I’m not sorry to me, apologize to your younger brother! Do you know how hard it was for Eunseok because of you guys… You, calling yourself Eunseok’s brother? You must know, right?!”

“Choi Heecheol, can’t you stop this!? What are you doing here?”

The teacher slapped the friend who was glaring at Junseok as if to kill him. Thanks to that, the friend released his grip on Junseok, but he was still muttering curses under his breath, unable to calm down.

“Junseok is here. Do you want to show that side of yourself in front of a friend you won’t see again?”

However, the friend, wide-eyed at the teacher’s words, turned his head towards my memorial photo. The next moment, Junseok, who was sitting on the floor, started screaming.

Due to the mixture of tears, I couldn’t make out what he was saying in detail, but I could tell that his words were an apology to me.

I didn’t know why my brother, who had never done anything bad to me, was apologizing. Instead, he would secretly slip me candy when Mom was nagging him or show me his game console when we were alone, even encouraging me to play with him.

I wanted to comfort him for his pitiful appearance, but I was in a position as a complete third party, not even his family or friend.

But… where are Mom and Dad? Why are no other relatives here, and why is everyone gathered here… glaring at Junseok as if to kill him…

“Sob… Eunseok… my… brother…”

“Huh…?!”

In the moment of confusion facing the enemies who were like assassins towards Junseok, my brother, who was screaming uncontrollably while lying down, suddenly collapsed with a thud.

Unconsciously, I tried to run towards my fallen brother, but unlike the friends who were looking down at him with cold eyes, the teacher carried the unconscious brother on his back and left this place.

But as they disappeared, my friends gathered here started whispering about Junseok and the harsh rumors about our absent Mom and Dad.

*

Unable to stand the atmosphere, I left with an empty heart.

I didn’t have an appetite, but feeling thirsty, I found a vending machine nearby. As I was about to take out coins from my pocket, I noticed two friends approaching this place and quickly hid behind the vending machine.

“Hey, here… but didn’t you say you don’t smoke?”

“I’m starting from today… it’s better than drinking, right?”

Both were classmates, but as far as I remember, we weren’t very close. Why do both of them have swollen eyes like they’ve been crying…?

“Phew~ By the way, Eunseok… what happened to him?”

“Cough cough! Well… I heard he was trying to save someone and got hit by a truck.”

“I knew he got hit by a truck, but… who did you hear that from?”

“His girlfriend told me. She said he was trying to help her friend and got into an accident… and now she’s feeling really guilty.”

…What?

“Yeah, it’s not her fault that Eunseok ended up like that, but with her personality, she must be feeling a lot of guilt… no one knows who the girl Eunseok saved is, right?”

“No one knows. Eunseok’s parents have already agreed, and they even refused to check the CCTV. And even if we knew who that girl was, it wouldn’t change anything.”

“That’s true…”

The friend finished smoking a cigarette and took out another pack. The friend sitting next to him, coughing forcefully, seemed to be trying to smoke by force, unable to let go of the cigarette in his hand.

“Do you remember that? The day our high school second-year math trip was scheduled.”

“…How could I forget that? Our classmates all went to Eunseok’s house to convince his parents to let him go, but they said they couldn’t afford it… So in the end, we pooled our money together to cover the math trip expenses.”

My mom, who always told me to work part-time to earn money instead of wasting time on things like math trips, suddenly allowed it… Was it because of you guys? Why…?

“Our class was given the money by the teacher… But later I heard that Eunseok couldn’t even go on field trips properly since elementary school, and he never went on a math trip in middle school.”

“Ha… So that’s why that guy always seemed to avoid us, saying he had no time… It was all because of those damn parents?”

A friend who fiercely stomped on the cigarette he had been holding in his mouth with his foot. Another friend quietly handed him another cigarette and took out a lighter.

“But Eunseok said that those people were the ones who took out his breathing tube? That’s why he only has his hyung, because he was caught by the police before… ”

“Hey, there’s no one here who doesn’t know that. It didn’t come out in the news, but Heecheol’s sister, who was a nurse at the time, told us everything. You can’t accidentally remove a breathing tube… Those people intentionally did that to kill Eunseok.”

– Sigh

As I eavesdropped on their conversation, my heart raced and I couldn’t calm down, just sitting there stunned.

“Phew~ I’ve thought about it several times. Those people… were they really Eunseok’s biological parents?”

Although my friends’ words were derogatory towards my parents, I didn’t feel any anger.

“Did you think the same way? It’s strange how they treat Eunseok so kindly, but treat him poorly… But even if they weren’t his biological parents, what they did is inhumane. Don’t you think?”

[Because of that bastard… I can’t take it anymore… I can’t stand it anymore… You go out and see who’s coming…]

As their conversation continued to echo in my mind, it was as if I could hear my mom’s voice from a forgotten memory.

Right… That day when I collapsed in front of the man… I definitely saw my mom…

But why did they try to kill me?

“Phew~ He was a good guy… He didn’t talk much, but he always took my jokes well and treated other kids without prejudice, right?”

…I’m not as good as you think I am.

“I think I know. No matter what anyone said, he always listened to the end, and if kids were about to fight, he would intervene to stop it… Sure, he got hit a few times, but he never started a fight, right?”

That was just pretending, you idiots… And the reason I stopped fights every time was because it would be troublesome if I had to call the teacher on days when things got out of hand…

I always considered you guys as friends… just friends I knew by name, but why do you care about me so much?

“You were unnecessarily kind, right? Eunseok, even though he had no money, bought us fish-shaped buns. He almost got hit by a truck trying to find a woman he didn’t even know…”

You consider someone who bought you fish-shaped buns as kind? And the fact that I saved Joo Eunhye, who almost got hit by a truck that day…

…

..

.

Huh?

The woman I saved was…

Joo Eunhye…?

– Do you remember now?