/
The scooter, which was going straight, leaned to the side. Lee-yeon hurriedly straightened the scooter again and spoke in a hurry.
“Manager, wait!”
“I heard it clearly. There was a sound!”
“You must’ve heard it wrong. It’s an empty room so how can there be any sound?”
“Look, I am sure I heard something.”
Lee-yeon kept a calm mind but she speeded up her scooter. The clear, usually calm scenery of Hwaido passed in a blur.
“I am sorry. I have already called the locksmith.”
“No!” she exclaimed. Eventually, her calm demeanor broke. She raked her mind to find a convincing reason to dissuade her manager, but she beat Lee-yeon to it.
“Stop your lies!” said the manager, “Stop telling me that you locked the room because water veins are growing. I am also tired of hearing that you are drying chilies and soyabeans in that room!”
“It’s—”
“Are you a bluebeard or something? Why do you keep forbidding me from opening that door? It doesn’t matter to me even if you have made a harem of men in that room!”
Lee-yeon mouth opened wide. Gye Choo-ja, who turned sixty this year, was an arborist who helped Lee-yeon with tree treatment. She also helped manage the hospital. Spruce Tree Hospital was So Lee-yeon’s, who turned thirty-two this year. She was single so she would hardly have a harem of men in the said room.
Manager Gye always wanted to open the room on the second floor whenever Lee-yeon left Wangjin. And today, she had found her moment. It was understandable that Gye Choo-ja was curious and upset from having things hidden from her. But manager, thought Lee-yeon, ‘I really can’t show you the second floor!’ It had been two years that the room on the second floor was treated with secrecy and mystery. A peculiar plant was hidden there, which shouldn’t be discovered by others, no matter what.
* * *
‘Spruce Tree Hospital’ was engraved in a beautiful font on a wooden plank that hung precariously, dropped down as Lee-yeon rushed into the hospital. The house which was shabby was stained with ivory color. However, the second floor was colored in a more urban gray tone which looked odd when compared to the lower floors.
She passed the first floor which was commonly used simultaneously as an office and a home. She ran up the stairs in a hurry. “Manager!” she called.
“Damn it!” said Gye Choo-ja. The locksmith was already there, about to break the lock on the door. Lee-yeon stood there, panting.
“I’m so sick of this, for real.”
“I told you already,” panted Lee-yeon, “There is another owner here, so I am not allowed to go in either. That is why I am leaving it empty.” That was half true, half a lie.
“Really? You aren’t allowed to go in?” said Gye Choo-ja, folding her hands in front of her. “So, how did you dry chilies and soyabeans in there then?”
“That… um…”
“Let me just sniff the air inside this ‘empty’ room for once then.”
“The air might be moldy. There has been no ventilation.” Lee-yeon persuades her.
“Really? You don’t trust me, do you? Even if you hid gold and diamonds in there, I would never steal them.”
‘I wouldn’t mind even if you stole my gold and diamonds’, thought Lee-yeon. She smiled awkwardly at Gye Choo-ja and made a gesture to head back downstairs. “Curiosity killed the cats, Manager.”
“You are a liar! Why don’t you talk like that with your clients?”
“But, for real…”
Gye Choo-ja thought that the tree doctor had looked easy going in the beginning but as she continued her dealings with her clients who were mostly condescending men in their forties, especially civil engineers, architects and from agricultural industries, her distrust seem to show no signs of improving.
“Director, I’m not giving up until I know the truth,” declared Gye Choo-ja sternly, as she retreated downstairs. Lee-yeon slumped to the floor. ‘This damned second floor…’ She closed her eyes, feeling tired.
***
The bed was surrounded with various machines. The machines beeped and were connected to the man lying on the bed. Those were the only things keeping him alive.
It was hard to tell the age of the man. With his eyes closed and his head slightly to the left, he seemed like any other person sound asleep. This large body had gradually shrunk over the past two years. The skin on his arms and legs had thinned down. However, his wide, angular shoulders were the same as the night Lee-yeon saw him in the mountains.
Lee-yeon sat by the patient releasing a huge sigh. It had been two years since the incident but there were no improvements. She ran her hands through her face to get rid of the fatigue. Even though she was a doctor, she was a doctor for the trees not for humans. This man – even in a vegetative state- was still a man, not a tree.
That night still played in Lee-yeon’s mind like a movie.
‘Don’t you need to run away?’
When she swung her tool, her power saw, to protect herself the man did not move an inch that day. There were clearly bloodstains on the tip of the saw but that didn’t matter to him. He did not move.
Lee-yeon remembered thinking that she would breathe her last breath there. She had turned around one last time to look at her killer. The moment she turned around and met the eyes of the man. He had stopped. She saw him clenching his jaw tightly, as if in pain. And slowly but surely his heavy body fell to the ground with a thud.
It was evident that someone had struck him from behind with a stone, that now lay beside the body stained with blood. The attacker was the man who would have been buried alive if Lee-yeon had not been spotted. The attacker stood tall covered with dirt and blood. He staggered looking at the body he had just attacked and as he tried to open his eyes he collapsed and rolled down the hill.
Sitting in that room now Lee-yeon felt chills running down her spine thinking of how easily she could have died that night. Now in this room filled with nothing but machines and silence, she looked at the body lying on the bed.
“Kwon Chae-woo,” she quietly spoke. The name still awkward on her tongue, “please don’t wake up” she continued. Pressing her temples, she took a deep breath. All she wanted was a quiet life ever since she ran away from home. For Lee-yeon an ordinary and boring life was a privilege what she yearned for.
“Please don’t wake up,” she whispered.
Lee-yeon buried her face in her hands because of the fatigue. At that moment, the man’s finger slightly moved.