Walking through the hospital corridor, Yoohan wanted to chuckle at how familiar it felt even after five years.
The last time he was here, it was when his mother died. She was in a regular ward at that time, as if she wasn't a former wife of the—then—Chairman of HS Group. As if she wasn't the mother of the Group's heir.
The first wife had a cold once and demanded a VIP room. But apparently, a dying comatose ex-wife did not qualify for the same treatment.
Yoohan, however much he seethed at this, couldn't do anything while having his broken leg mended. He couldn't tap into his resources because his asset was being confiscated, and he couldn't tap into his hidden one without alarming the family.
But that might as well. He would hate to think his mother got a care from the group's money. He redirected the hospital bill to his own account, so that her mother didn't have to feel like she owed HS or the Chairman anything when she woke up.
Although she never did wake up.
For three months Yoohan walked back and forth from his VIP ward to her mother's room while getting his rehabilitation. He almost turned toward her ward now, like a habit. It was good that a sturdy hand pulled him in the right direction.
"You sure I shouldn't come inside?" Jay asked as they rode the elevator to the VIP ward.
Yoohan chuckled at the displeasure expression on the man's face. "What—do you think he would suddenly move and attack me?" he glance at the man who was no longer his bodyguard, but still acting like one. "Even if that's the case, you think I'll get done in by a man with a stroke?"
Jay looked at the younger man, whose black eyes darkened in the same way they always did when Yoohan talked about revenge. It felt like they were done, but a show always needed a finale, so Yoohan hadn't put off that flame of retribution inside of him.
He smirked as he replied. "I just want to see the show."
Yoohan scoffed, and the elevator opened. The nurse in charge of the VIP ward knew Yoohan enough to let him just waltz through unrecorded. Or it was probably a couple of million wons inside the basket of refreshments he received.
The same amount landed on the hand of the bodyguards stationed outside of the Chairman's—no, the old man's—room; the VIP room that Yoohan used five years ago. It was enough for them to suddenly have a craving for a smoking break, which they took together with Jay.
Alone in the hall, Yoohan stared at the familiar door before closing his eyes. He took a deep breath, and when he opened his eyes, they were dark and without light. Without hesitation, he opened the door and entered the room.
It was a suite room, so he was greeted with the seating area. On normal occasions, there would be a lot of people there; the children and the wife who would suck up for more position and inheritance, the secretaries and directors who would relay the condition of the company, the nurses who were dedicated to taking care of a single patient...
But there was none of them today. The seating room was empty—perhaps had never been occupied at all. Yoohan walked straight to the bedroom, and found a pair of widened eyes staring at him.
From the wild movement of those eyes, Yoohan knew the old man was yelling. Or he wanted to. The trembling mouth opened and closed repeatedly, but there was no sound coming out. The left side of the old man's body flailed and jerked, but it failed to make any movement in the young man's eyes.
Yoohan stopped at the foot of the bed, staring at the shaking eyes of the half-paralyzed patient. The stress and anger had spiked the old man's blood pressure so much that he ended up getting a stroke. Yoohan had this thought that perhaps he would feel some sort of pity when he saw his father in a helpless condition, but...
His heart was cold.
He used to yearn for this old man's love and affection in the past. A faraway memory that felt so blurry now. Yoohan still tried to respect this man and called him father even after the divorce. But the more he saw his mother suffer, the more his hope waned.
Everything turned into a cold fury, until his mother died. No record of the old man ever visited her, of her dead son. From the ashes of his brother's and mother's remains, a flame of retribution burned inside his soul.
"You seem miserable," Yoohan smiled, a gesture that did not touch the void in his eyes. The old man stopped flailing, and just looked at him with glaring eyes. Yoohan chuckled and walked toward the chair beside the bed. "No—you seem to think that you're miserable."
He took a seat with a small groan, asking nonchalantly. "How long have you been here? A week? Two weeks?" Yoohan glanced at the chart on the edge of the bed, before looking back at the old man that was trying to move his head so he could look at Yoohan. With a smile, Yoohan added. "You'll stay for at least three months, right?"
The soundless mouth gnashed its teeth, and Yoohan shook his head. "Don't look at me like that," he sighed, as if talking to an unruly child instead of his father.
Not that he thought the man had any right to call himself a father.
Leaning back and knitting his fingers together on top of his lap, Yoohan added calmly. "Don't you think you should at least experience what my mother feels?" he paused for a bit, letting his words sink inside the old man's head. "You're not going to whine just because you become physically ill for a few months, right?"
You could at least move a bit—Yoohan added inwardly. His mother couldn't even open her eyes. She was in a state where she could only live by attaching life support units. All because no one could sign the consent form for her operation. Yoohan was her medical proxy, and he was unconscious. And her closest relative, by association, was supposed to be her ex-husband, who was in the middle of frolicking with yet another mistress and scolded the attendant who called him about it.
During those three months, there wasn't even any hope for her recovery.
The only reason why it went on for three months was simply...because Yoohan couldn't let her go yet. Because he hadn't numbed his heart yet.
For a while, Lee Hwal finally stopped glaring. His eyes shook with different emotions this time. Was it regret?
Yoohan scoffed in disgust.
Was the old man regretting what he did in the past because he felt sorry? Or was it because he felt that he wouldn't experience all his misfortune if he did Yoohan and his mother right?
Either way, Yoohan felt it was disgusting how the man couldn't feel like that five years ago when he knew his former wife was on a deathbed.
Tapping on the armrest of the chair absentmindedly, Yoohan asked. "Does it hurt, losing HS?"
At these words, the old man went agitated again, which showed Yoohan how justified his disgust was. Ignoring the angry glare and frustrated gesture, Yoohan continued nonchalantly.
"I wonder which one would hurt you more; losing the Group, or losing someone you love," he said, looking up as if he was in contemplation. "I was wondering about that for a long time. But then, I realized that you have never known love, so I can't really do that."
Yoohan shrugged, shifting his gaze back at the old man, who frowned deeply at him as he continued with a smile. "It seemed that you love your lifestyle and the Group more than the woman who loved you," he said. Staring straight at the old man's eyes, Yoohan added with a low voice, the smile had gone from his face. "Truly loved you."
He continued to stare at the old man, watching a lot of emotions flash inside those blurry eyes. Yoohan had no interest to decipher those emotions though, he just want to let out what he had always wanted to say.
"I wonder if you know that," he said, slowly, to make sure the old man knew it—knew that among all the people in this life, the one who truly loved him was Yoohan's mother. Even after all the pain and betrayal, even while knowing that love was unrequited.
Not the other family members, not his children, not his subordinates. And not even his other wives and many mistresses.
The only person who truly loved him was the one he completely abandoned.
"I would like for you to understand how it feels like to get betrayed by someone you love from now on, but..." Yoohan sighed. "No one loves you, and you love no one, so how could it be?"
The young man made a disappointed face, shaking his head for failing to enact equal misery onto the man who was supposed to be his father.
"How could you even start to know how she feels? If you had the capability for that, you wouldn't abandon her from the start," Yoohan closed his eyes, and let out another long sigh.
The old man, in his inability to move, just stared at the young man, wondering when was the last time Yoohan called him father. When was the last time Yoohan thought of him as one. And when those eyes were opening again, the old man froze.
The young man who was supposed to be his son—his real son—was looking at him like he was the most loathsome, the most disgusting thing in the whole world.
Yoohan stood up, and steadily walked to the bed without breaking their eye contact. With the deep void in his eyes, he grabbed the bed's railing, and parted his curled lips.
"Or you know, I can make it quick," Yoohan said, with a smile as cold as his eyes. "Ten, fifteen minutes?" he whispered, glancing at the bedside table.
There was a notepad and a pen beside a phone, and the smile grew wider. "I can use that," he continued, shifting his gaze toward the old man's abdomen. It was covered with a blanket, but the eyes were staring hard as if they could pierce the fabric with a gaze. "—and let you experience what my little brother experienced on his last day."
The old man's eyes widened, frozen, as Yoohan leaned forward and looked deeper into his eyes. "I'll look into your eyes as it happened, just like how I did that night."
The voice was dripped with ice and poison. With ashes and tar. With glass shards and blazing fire.
"Hmm...do you even remember you have another son? No? Shall I tell you what happened then?" Yoohan pulled back, leaning relaxedly against the railing as he spoke. "Shall I tell you how cold it was, on the night of my birthday? Shall I tell you how he looked into my eyes and cried for help? For his mother?" Yoohan paused, before adding with spite. "For his father?"
There was no fake smile now, just blatant hatred in the black eyes, and distaste in the scrunched face. "Do you know how disgusted I am that you are still in his mind even though you never cared one bit about him?" Yoohan laughed, a bitter and eerie sound that reminded the old man of the night the young man told him they would burn together.
But the laughter stopped as soon as it started, and it was replaced by a low, heavy, almost trembling tone. "Shall I tell you how his voice became fainter and fainter and fainter, how he was trembling and seizing as he lost more and more blood?"
The black eyes stared at the old man like a pair of daggers. "But you won't care, will you?" Yoohan said dryly, arching his brow in a show of mockery. "You won't care unless you experience it yourself."
There was a full minute of silence after that. A silence so heavy that was enough for the heart monitor to beep off repeatedly. Within the loud noise, Yoohan leaned down, whispering so low and thick it might as well be poison.
"Perhaps one day, who knows?"
* * *
"Mina-ssi must be happy," the middle-aged nurse of the mental facility smiled nicely to the pretty young man as they walked along the corridor. "No one had visited her so far."
She was usually a grumpy old woman who was too tired of dealing with the patients' acts, but right now she was smiling ear to ear. Perhaps because two very handsome men who looked like celebrities came to the facilities, bringing boxes of drinks and snacks and even packed meats for the caretakers.
While the taller handsome man was handing out the boxes, smiling so charmingly and bringing such a refreshing atmosphere to the bleak building, the shorter pretty young man was asking to meet a patient that got administered a few weeks ago.
"Really?" the young widened his eyes in response. Even his voice sounded nice. "I'm quite surprised. I remembered her to be a very sociable and lovely person."
"Oh, you know how it is in this kind of place," the nurse waved her hand and shook her head. "They are all being forgotten just like that, no matter how many friends they have before."
"It's rather sad," the young man looked appalled and saddened. "My late mother used to be her good friend, so I thought I'll check on her," he sighed, and smiled so gently, so pretty. "You know...on behalf of my late mother."
The nurse put her hand over her lips, looking at the young man with adoration. Not only he had a nice voice and a pretty face, but he also had such a good heart. If only her own son had even one of those qualities—haa...
"I'm going to visit my mother later, so I want to make a...how do I say this...report?" the young man laughed awkwardly with a soft voice that made the nurse swoon. She just wanted to pat the young man's head in place of his late mother, telling him he was growing to be such a good man.
"Oh my, that's very nice of you,"
"Well, I'm sure my mother would prefer it if Mina-ssi is fine and healthy, but..." the young man smiled sadly.
"Oh, I completely understand," the nurse patted the man's arm, and then stopped in front of a room. "Ah, here we are."
It was one of the best rooms, but it was isolated from the outside. It looked like a hotel room, except there was not much stuff there, because apparently, she liked throwing things from time to time. All of the furniture was bolted to the floor, and all the windows were made of force-resistant glass. She wasn't the type to hurt herself, however, because she was too narcissistic for that, but she did scream and laugh and throw tantrums almost every hour except when she fell asleep.
For easy assessment and supervision, there was a large window in one of the walls where the doctors and nurses, as well as visiting relatives, could see her condition from a safe place.
"She's been causing trouble with the other patient, so we have to confine her like this," she explained to the young man. "Unfortunately, it means we can't let you inside."
"That's too bad," the man sighed, and the nurse added with a heavy heart.
"She...most likely won't be able to recognize you,"
"I see," the young man frowned for a second, looking rather disappointed and...angry? But the expression vanished in the blink of an eye, and the young man turned to face the nurse with the prettiest smile. "In that case...if I may impose you on something..."
"Yes?"
"I found this not long ago, among my mother's belonging," the young man pulled out something from his inside pocket. "I feel like...this might do something good?"
He showed it to the nurse; a photograph inside a soft padded frame. Inside the picture, there were two women, young and pretty, laughing side by side and posing beautifully to the camera. One of them smiled shyly, an innocent beauty whose eyes resembled the young man. Another one was obviously the young Mina. It was clear that the women in that picture were best friends.
"You know—perhaps she could remember things clearer. They look so happy here, so maybe it'll help her to remember that she could still be happy?" the young man said, with a small smile on his pretty face. But he added hurriedly, as if he felt uncomfortable of inconveniencing the nurse. "I'm not forcing you, of course, I just think—"
"It's fine," the nurse took the photograph from the nice young man's hands. "Of course, I can do something like that."
"Thank you,"
She patted the young man's forearm and smiled widely. "Wait here, I'll put it in her room."
The young man smiled in gratitude and bowed politely, with both hands on his front and waist bent deeply. "Thank you again."
Gosh—how nice and polite. The nurse smiled even wider and proceeded to enter the patient's room with the framed photograph in her hands. Jeong Mina had been sitting blankly on her bed, in one of her calm episodes. She was brought here after her divorce; unstable, laughing maniacally, and attacking people she deemed she didn't like just because they 'looked at her wrong'.
"Good afternoon Mina-ssi," the nurse approached the dazed woman. "Your friend's son visits you today, aren't you glad? You've been whining about how people didn't care about you anymore."
The nurse spoke rather dryly, with a forced benevolent smile. She didn't really like the woman, who always acted haughty and smugly as if she was still the Madam of the conglomerate family, looking down on her and the other caretakers.
But she couldn't show her dislike in front of the nice young woman, could she?
"Here, he even brings you this nice photograph from when you are young," she put the framed picture on her palm, and she started to move, looking down curiously at the picture. "He said the two of you are best friends. Aren't you glad you could see your best friends from now on?"
Mina froze for a few seconds, just staring at the picture for a long time. And then her hands started to shake, her whole body started to shake. Her eyes widened, her lips trembling, and she started to gasp, as if she was choking.
In the next second, she started screaming and bursting into tears. She let go of the frame and scrambled to the corner of her room, yelling for someone to stop looking down at her, to stop following her, to stop, to stop!
She crouched down, covering her head and her face, and before she could manage to close her eyes, she saw a familiar young man through the window, smiling at her. The void-like eyes would haunt her sleep for many nights to come.
* * *
"Anyway, that's all I can report on my retribution journey," Yoohan let out a long sigh after finishing his report. He didn't lie to the nurse—he did plan to visit his mother and brother to tell them that his revenge was over.
In front of the shelf that contained their ashes, Yoohan seated on the floor, with a glass of soju between them because he hadn't had time to celebrate Hansol becoming an adult before.
"I know you guys probably didn't like how I did it—after all, you're all far nicer than me," he chuckled, the alcohol felt a bit more bitter than usual in his throat. "But that's okay," he looked up, took a deep breath, and smiled. "This sin is mine to burden. You just...have fun over there."
He paused then, for the first time taking a break from his long long storytelling. She looked at the picture of his mother and his baby brother, smiling just like the beautiful people that they were. It was a picture that needed a lot of time to dig, of when Hansoo received first place in his school, and they had celebrated it together, just the three of them.
"I promised you that I...would come over soon, but..." Yoohan muttered the resolution he made when he started this journey. With bitten lips, he fixed his posture and began to prostrate. "I'm sorry," he whispered against the floor. "I don't think I can do that yet. Can you...wait a little longer?"
He continued to bow for a little while, until his heart felt satisfied. Before he stood up and leave, he looked at the urns and the picture once more. He smiled, a bit shyly this time.
"Next time...I'll introduce you to him next time," he said, before turning around with the bag of leftover soju in his hand. The cold air of winter greeted him outside the door, and the snow that was falling reminded him of the rain when he came out of this building years ago.
That time too, someone put an umbrella above his head.
Yoohan looked up, seeing the black fabric protecting him from the falling snow. And then his gaze shifted forward. The one who held the umbrella was also a man this time, his closest aides on both occasions.
But this time, he knew this man wouldn't betray him. As he looked into the pale eyes, he knew the man would be there by his side.
This time, he didn't take the umbrella and left by himself. This time, he took the man's offered hand instead, who spoke with a nice, soothing voice.
"Since you're done with the goodbyes, shall we get to our vacation now?"
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🎶 Three Days Grace - The End Is Not The Answer
Sorry for the late update
This chapter is just Yoohan talking 🤣
Again, it's not the ending yet