CH 48

I remembered that I tripped right in front of the room that I found Goyeon in. I checked my palms and my knees—maybe a bit too late—but thankfully there were no shards of glass embedded in my skin. Thank goodness.

Woorim walked past Goyeon’s open room and grabbed the doorknob to a room two doors down. He waited for me to come up next to him. The black door looked a bit different from the other doors on this floor. I read the placard on the door.

“Staff lounge.”

“I saw on the way that the other doors were labeled with things like consultation room, patient room, and operating theater.”

“Why here?” I asked.

The staff lounge would have stuff like a microwave, sink, water filter, and stovetop for boiling water for tea and cooking simple dishes. In addition, some hospitals had huge refrigerators and allowed long-term patients to store their snacks.

When I was injured before and hospitalized for about two days, there was a huge commotion in the ward I was in because an elderly man stole some snacks from the lounge. That was the extent of its significance to me, so I had no idea why Woorim brought me here.

Instead of answering, he raised his hand and stroked my cheek. I flinched in surprise, but soon I was trembling in pain from the fingers touching my injury. It was where Goyeon slapped me.

“It’s swollen. Were you hit?”

I almost forgot. “…Is it noticeable?”

“Of course. But everyone else probably didn’t notice because they were so shocked. Even your scary and strict manager.”

My scary and strict manager—other people must see Hyehyun like that. That was a weird feeling.

Woorim opened the door and entered. Lit by the flashlight and light from the hallway, the room looked normal. By no means was it in good condition—it just looked less damaged than the other rooms.

The staff lounge was smaller than the other rooms. It made me think of the old student studios that I lived in back in the day in Seoul. On the floor, there was a cheap-looking microwave that was dented from crashing into some hard surface and a table that looked like it housed the microwave before it was split in half with an ax.

Woorim walked over to the sink, which was the only intact item in the room. He turned the faucet handles; surprisingly, water flowed out. However, the stream of water was so thin that it could serve no other purpose than to wash one’s hands.

As Woorim wet his hands with water, he asked, “Did Goyeon do this to you?”

“Who knows.”

“You said back there. You said you came down with Goyeon. But why did Goyeon go downstairs by herself?”

“I thought I said that too. I was looking for the batteries that I dropped.”

“No, you didn’t talk about it.” Woorim stared at me and made a broad, indulgent grin. “You told us about what happened after you split with Goyeon, not why you ended up parting ways with her.”

He sounded gentle, but that was just his tone; the meaning in his words was as pointed as when he derided Hyehyun a moment ago. I wrinkled my nose and averted his gaze. Woorim sniffed the water on his hands before continuing. “Did you fight with Goyeon? It did seem like you two weren’t on good terms since the last shoot.”

“…There was a good reason for this.”

“Did Goyeon do that to the flashlight too? What was the reason?”

I felt like I didn’t need to answer that.

“What does that matter to you?” I asked irritably. He was the one who said he wanted to get closer to me. If I showed my annoyance, maybe he would stop asking me questions. Just as expected, Woorim’s questions stopped there.

Woorim’s smile seemed to say that he understood, and he continued, “If you don’t want to answer, I won’t ask anymore. Sorry for pressing you.”

It was the same face he made when he said that he wouldn’t ask any more about the grim reaper. He turned to the sink and changed the topic smoothly. “The water seems clean, but it’s a bit tepid.”

“What about it?”

Didn’t he come to wash his hands? He couldn’t be thinking of drinking water from such a sketchy source.

However, he simply said, “So you see…” and trailed off. Woorim opened the yellowed door of the refrigerator. Electricity must have been running since the lamp inside the fridge came on. Upon opening the fridge and the freezer, Woorim straightened his back, looking satisfied.