RAA-10

CHAPTER 10

It was a refreshing morning, quite different from yesterday.

After clearing up the misunderstanding with the man next door, I felt at ease, and my cold symptoms had also improved considerably, leaving me feeling lighthearted.

“Take good care of the house.”

After speaking to Cheshire, who was lying in the yard, Seyeon left the house to retrieve the car she had left at the hospital.

Just then, she ran into the man from next door as he was opening his front gate and coming out.

For some reason, he was leaving for work a little later than usual.

“Good morning.”

There was a brief awkward silence, but Seyeon greeted him casually as if nothing had happened.

“Are you going to get your car?”

“Yes.”

“You’re going to the hospital anyway, aren’t you? Come with me in my car.”

“I’m fine….”

“All right, then.”

The man turned around abruptly without even letting Seyeon finish speaking.

Watching his back as he gradually walked away, Seyeon thought carefully to herself.

Late autumn was cold and made it easy to catch a cold or the flu, and without Seoul Clinic, it would take at least an hour by car to reach the nearest clinic in the town.

Even that hospital was much more poorly equipped in terms of facilities and equipment than Seoul Clinic.

After reaching her conclusion, Seyeon hurried over and matched his pace as she walked beside him.

“I was going to say that I’d be fine, but I’d appreciate a ride if you’re offering one. You really don’t listen until people finish talking.”

“You said the car was a rental.”

“Yes, I rented it from a car rental company in town for two months.”

“Two months?”

He looked at Seyeon with a questioning gaze.

Two months instead of one sounded more definite, as though she had already decided exactly when she would leave.

It sounded almost like a firm resolution that she would not be here next year.

But to Seyeon, his words sounded as if he were asking whether she intended to stay that long.

“I’m not staying any longer than that. I’ll really go back to Seoul in two months. If things go well, I might even go back sooner.”

“What do you do at the resort?”

“I’m a temporary employee on the guest-room team. They hired several people on seasonal contracts for the winter.”

The most junior employees at the resort, the housekeepers, cleaned guest rooms, changed bedding, and restocked minibars.

In other words, they worked in a department that allowed them to inspect every guest room thoroughly.

“If it’s only a two-month temporary contract, you could have found a job in Seoul.”

He was right.

If she was only going to work for two months, she could have found another part-time job in Seoul.

Coming all the way to this remote place, working for only two months, and then returning was something anyone would find difficult to understand.

It wasn’t as though she was being paid an enormous amount of money, either.

“Actually, I wanted to come visit this area. My grandmother’s hometown is somewhere around here. She was very young at the time and doesn’t remember exactly where it was, but she said there was an ocean nearby and that it was a beautiful place to watch the sunset, so I think this must be it.”

Of course, her main purpose was to find an important factor that could help her succeed in the bidding, but that was another matter.

“You must be quite close to your grandmother if you’re even willing to search for her hometown.”

“My grandmother says that was the happiest time of her life. She says the days when she was poor and hungry were the happiest, so I was curious… and I also wanted to see the same things she saw. The sea and the sun are the same now as they were back then, after all.”

“You came all the way here for such a romantic reason?”

It might have been romantic, but it certainly wasn’t very convincing.

She could tell from the man’s expression that he felt the same way.

But she wasn’t lying.

“Of course, that isn’t the whole reason, but that’s more or less the story.”

“Everyone was wondering why Miss Myeong Se-yeon came here, so you could have just told them.”

“It would sound strange if I said I came because this seemed like the neighborhood where my grandmother lived when she was young.”

The two continued talking as they walked toward the empty lot where Yujin had parked his car.

Seyeon found it strange that he was no longer being sarcastic toward her, but she was secretly pleased by the positive change.

It was a step toward becoming friendly neighbors.

“Then can I ask you something, too?”

“Ask.”

There was only one thing Seyeon wanted to know about Yujin.

She wanted to confirm the connection between the man next door and Kim Daehyun.

“I saw your medical license at the hospital, and something about your background caught my attention.”

Seyeon carefully broached the subject, hoping that he either didn’t know Kim Daehyun or wasn’t particularly close to him.

“You graduated from a university in Seoul and completed your residency at a tertiary general hospital, so why did you open a practice in Cheonghae-ri?”

“Yes, although I imagine people around here have already asked you that a lot.”

“There was a lot of vacant land in Cheonghae-ri, and there weren’t any large hospitals, so I opened a practice here. There are plenty of hospitals in Seoul.”

Seyeon had heard that opening a private practice in Seoul wasn’t easy.

There was hardly a neighborhood in Seoul without a hospital.

Doctors also didn’t have a mandatory retirement age, so once they established themselves somewhere, they rarely closed their practices, meaning vacancies were hard to come by.

Besides, the cost of opening a practice would likely be much higher there than here.

But considering the current Seoul Clinic, it seemed as though opening that practice had cost far more than opening one in Seoul.

“That’s true, there are hospitals everywhere in Seoul. Then you must know a lot of doctors who did their residency at Hansung Hospital, right? There must be some you’re close to, too.”

Seyeon, carefully approaching the center of the information she wanted to know, focused on Yujin, who had a point of connection with Kim Daehyun.

“Why are you curious about that?”

“It’s Hansung Hospital. Isn’t it natural that I’d be curious?”

“I don’t think you would be.”

With that, Yujin ended the conversation about the subject.

Maybe it was just her imagination, but his tone seemed to have become cold again, just like before.

Seyeon hurriedly searched for another topic to maintain a friendly relationship with the man next door.

Then she suddenly remembered the day she had gone to his house with Cheshire.

“Then what about the tattoo on your arm? Nil Desperandum. When did you get that?”

Seyeon pointed at his right forearm with her index finger.

She hadn’t known about it at the hospital because he wore a gown, but she had happened to see it the day she went to his house because of Cheshire.

Yujin, who had been walking while looking straight ahead the entire time, suddenly stopped and half-turned his body to look down at her.

“I’d never seen someone with a tattoo on their arm other than celebrities, so I was just curious. If you don’t want to talk about it, I won’t ask anymore.”

Maybe they should just go back to having a bad relationship.

“When I was in the military.”

Just as Seyeon was about to change her mind under his silent downward gaze, Yujin casually gave his answer and started walking again.

He seemed to be walking slowly, but his strides were so long that Seyeon had to move her feet quickly to keep up with him.

“Is that even possible in the military in our country?”

“I never said it was our country’s military.”

“Did it hurt a lot when you got it?”

“Lettering just stings a little.”

Seyeon deliberately didn’t ask about the story behind his tattoo.

He probably hadn’t gotten the words Never Give Up tattooed during a particularly happy time in his life.

The people of Cheonghae-ri thought Seyeon was suspicious, but the truly suspicious person was the man next door.

But didn’t everyone have at least one story they didn’t want to tell others, something they kept buried in their hearts?

For example, the reason her uncle had risen to become a company president at a young age while her father had remained in the position of Head of the Research and Development Division disguised as an executive director even after turning fifty.

Seyeon had been curious whether he knew Kim Daehyun and, if he did, whether they were close, but now she decided to let go of that curiosity.

She would be leaving this place in two months anyway, so what difference did it make?

She decided that she would simply treat him like a neighbor, giving him something nice now and then, such as resort discount coupons, and maintain an appropriately friendly relationship.

A few days later, her cold had completely disappeared as if it had been washed away.

Feeling better, she deliberately went far away to buy a small cat tower.

On the weekend, she was struggling to assemble it by herself when the man next door came over to complain about the noise.

Then he pushed her aside, quickly assembled the cat tower himself, and finished it in no time.

After she placed the cat tower in the yard, Cheshire stopped rolling around on the cement floor.

Apparently pleased with his new playground, he showed no intention of coming down except when it was time to eat.

And finally, Monday morning arrived.

Seyeon left the house earlier than usual and noticed a white paper bag hanging from the front gate handle.

She tilted her head in confusion and opened the bag, finding a small note and several high-dose liquid vitamin ampoules inside.

They were German nutritional supplements said to help maintain immune balance and recover from fatigue.

“There were too many of them lying around at the hospital.”

After thinking for a moment, Seyeon took the paper bag in her hand and headed toward the stairs.