CHAPTER 8
Yujin, who was leaving the examination room after putting on his outer coat, came to an abrupt stop.
The consultation was over and all the staff had gone home, yet a full-body massage chair was busily operating with a small mechanical hum.
A middle-aged man standing beside it bowed his head slightly in greeting, looking apologetic.
“Your consultation is over for today. Please come back tomorrow.”
“I don’t need a consultation, but my body feels stiff, so I figured I’d get a massage before I leave.”
The person reclining in the massage chair with his eyes gently closed was Chairman Kang.
He was Kang Sunbyeong, the Chairman of Sunrise Hotel & Resort, which generated annual sales exceeding ten trillion won.
Having retired from active business, he occasionally traveled around Sunrise Resort with only one personal secretary accompanying him, and this time it was Cheonghae-ri’s turn again.
Despite being the owner of a massive hotel chain, Chairman Kang was not a businessman whose face was widely known.
Even the employees working at Sunrise barely knew what he looked like, but Yujin recognized him at first sight.
He had seen him before at gatherings he had attended with his father and grandfather.
‘Director Si is the first person in Cheonghae-ri to recognize me.’
Chairman Kang, whose identity had been discovered after he came in for a simple consultation, had arbitrarily appointed Yujin as the local physician in charge of his health in Cheonghae-ri.
“Why are you getting a massage here?”
“You should do that at home.”
“Strange, isn’t it?”
“It feels different doing it here compared to at home.”
“Maybe it’s the difference in humidity and the sea breeze.”
“It’s the difference in your mood.”
Yujin clicked his tongue, dropped the bag hanging from one shoulder onto the waiting-room sofa, and sat down.
The man had donated three full-body massage chairs worth tens of millions of won each to the hospital, so there was little Yujin could say when he wanted to get a massage before leaving.
“How’s the hospital doing?”
“Too well.”
“That’s the problem.”
“It should be empty enough for the wind to blow through.”
Chairman Kang burst out laughing at Yujin’s displeased remark.
It was funny precisely because he knew Yujin was being completely serious rather than joking.
“That’s all because of your own doing, isn’t it?”
“Why would someone so accomplished come all the way down here and put himself through this?”
“I regret it every morning as soon as I open my eyes.”
After finishing his massage, Chairman Kang slowly raised his upper body.
When his personal secretary reached out an arm to support him, he waved him away.
“That’s enough.”
“Do you really think I can’t even get up by myself?”
Chairman Kang slowly rose from the massage chair and moved over to the sofa opposite Yujin.
He clasped both hands over his cane and rested it against the floor as he stared at Yujin.
“How long are you staying this time?”
Chairman Kang usually booked rooms under his personal secretary’s name.
Sometimes he used a suite, while other times he stayed in a family room or one of the villas, but he always stayed and left just like an ordinary resort guest without any special arrangements or formalities.
“Well, I think I might stay a little longer this time.”
“I met quite an interesting young lady earlier.”
“We had a very enjoyable time.”
“Did she say she enjoyed it too?”
“Of course!”
“We got along very well.”
“She’s a very curious young lady and asks about all sorts of things.”
“So I decided to graciously share some of my knowledge with her.”
Chairman Kang had personally gotten the contact information of the young woman he had met on the bench.
He had always contacted people through his personal secretary, so even for him, this was a first.
“Did you come here to tell me about that?”
“No, that’s not it.”
“I’m talking about what I mentioned briefly last time.”
“You remember?”
“I told you to meet one of my relative’s nieces, didn’t I?”
“I already told you I’m not interested.”
Yujin frowned as though he did not even want to hear about it.
“Why do you say you don’t want to meet her without even giving her a chance?”
“I don’t want to become entangled with you through marriage.”
“I don’t have any children, so all my nieces and nephews feel like my own children to me.”
“If Director Si becomes my nephew-in-law, I’ll treat you very well, so think about it carefully.”
“I still don’t want to.”
Chairman Kang was quite fond of Yujin.
That was why he wanted to connect him with the daughter of a distant relative and bring him into his family, but Yujin remained completely unmoved.
Even though Yujin was the son of the chairman of Hansung Hospital, this was a meeting personally arranged by none other than Chairman Kang of Sunrise.
Yet Yujin rejected it outright without even reconsidering it once, which irritated him.
“You’ll regret it later.”
“I won’t regret it, so please introduce me to someone else.”
“I’m fine as I am.”
When Yujin flatly rejected him again with a serious expression, Chairman Kang shot him an unhappy look.
Seyeon opened her eyes with difficulty that morning and stared blankly at the ceiling.
The price she paid for enjoying the romance of the previous day while exposed to the cold sea breeze had been brutal.
Her tonsils had swollen so badly that it was difficult to swallow, and she had developed a fever.
The early-stage body aches she had been suffering from had worsened.
She had already accumulated layers upon layers of fatigue, and yesterday’s outing had pushed her over the edge.
There was a reason doctors always told their patients not to overexert themselves and to rest.
…I need to stay healthy.
Her plan to stay healthy throughout her time here had collapsed without even making it past a single day.
She had not wanted to go back to Seoul Clinic ever again, yet after only a few days, it looked like she would have to visit again.
Seyeon barely managed to sit up, her body heavy.
Her head was spinning, but she had to feed Cheshire.
Following the doctor from the house next door’s advice, she had given Cheshire only water and kept him fasting all day yesterday, then finally fed him a small amount of a mixture of two types of food at night.
Perhaps he had been hungry, because he had been making a huge fuss since morning, demanding to be fed.
After giving Cheshire his food and taking the medication she had been prescribed, she went back to bed, but even after sleeping for a while, her condition seemed to have gotten worse rather than better.
In the end, Seyeon sluggishly got dressed, grabbed her car keys, and headed out.
She did not have the strength to drive, but she would have to wait a long time for a bus, and if she was unlucky, the clinic might close before she arrived.
She drove the car she had parked in the vacant lot toward Seoul Clinic.
I wonder if that elderly gentleman from yesterday is all right.
The old man had only been sitting there for a relatively short time, but the sea breeze had still been cold.
Considering his age, if he was someone who, like her, was not accustomed to the sea breeze, he might have caught a cold by now.
She did not even know how she had managed to drive all the way to the clinic.
In a half-conscious state, as though she had not fully woken up, Seyeon somehow arrived at Seoul Clinic.
After parking in front of the Seoul Clinic building, Seyeon washed her hands thoroughly and dried them, then pressed her mask tightly against her face so that there were no gaps before going inside.
Not washing your hands made you a traitor, and not wearing a mask also made you a traitor.
The brainwashing from the old man she had met at the hospital was terrifying.
“I’ll wait here.”
After writing her name and date of birth in the notebook, Seyeon found a secluded spot in the corner of the waiting-room sofa and closed her eyes with her back and head against the wall.
She was worried that she needed to recover her usual condition before she went back to work next week.
“…Ms. Myung Seyeon.”
Seyeon, who had unexpectedly fallen asleep, returned to consciousness at the distant, almost hallucination-like voice of a nurse.
“The nurse is calling your name.”
Someone beside her carefully shook her arm.
It was no longer surprising that strangers in the hospital knew her name.
“…Thank you.”
Seyeon forced herself to clear her increasingly hazy mind and stood up.
After sitting in the waiting chair directly outside the examination room for a few minutes, she went inside.
“What’s bothering you?”
“Everything.”
Sitting blankly in the examination chair, Seyeon heard the voice of the man from the house next door buzzing in her ears.
She did not even have the strength to respond to his sarcasm, but fortunately, he simply examined her like an ordinary patient.
“Your symptoms have gotten worse.”
“What did you do yesterday to get this bad in just one day?”
“Yesterday, I went into town and rented a car…”
“I bought coffee and bread at a café…”
“I watched the sunset by the pier.”
“And I fed Cheshire too.”
Seyeon went into painstaking detail about everything she had done the previous day.
He probably had not been asking about her daily routine, but she was too out of it to even realize that.
“Ah.”
After measuring her temperature with a forehead thermometer, he examined the inside of her mouth.
Her fever was so high that the cool metal tongue depressor against her tongue felt refreshing.
“I’ll change your fever reducer and painkiller and put you on antibiotics.”
“Get an IV drip, then go home and lie down.”
“Your fever will come down after the drip, and your body will feel much better.”
“Go outside and get instructions from the staff.”
“…Yes.”
Seyeon weakly nodded and left the examination room.
Since she was sick, she had neither the strength nor the will to get into any sort of argument with the man from the house next door.
After paying, she also picked up her medication in advance from the pharmacy next door.
She had been worried that by the time she finished receiving the IV drip, both the clinic and the pharmacy would be closing.
The pharmacist at Seoul Pharmacy was as cold and displeased toward her as ever, but she was too exhausted to care.
“Ms. Myung Seyeon, this way, please.”
Following the nurse with the gentle voice, Seyeon entered through the door marked IV Room.
There were heated stone beds arranged along both sides, and she chose one and lay down.
“You’ll be fine after you get some sleep.”
The kind nurse connected the IV line to Seyeon’s arm, raised the temperature of the heated stone bed until it was warm, and then left the room.
Seyeon placed an arm over her forehead and closed her eyes.
With her back warm, sleep quickly overcame her.
