Chapter 40

Becoming an adult was directly synonymous with having significantly less time to cry.

“You call that a lunge?”

“Then what is it.”

“I asked you first, Hee-ji.”

In practical terms, it meant that you were only allowed to cry after you had hung the laundry, washed the dishes, finished getting ready for work, and successfully arrived at the office without being late.

However, the circumstances of an adult usually only grew more complicated after clocking in, which meant So Gi-hyeon hadn’t found a single moment to cry yet.

His heart felt so suffocatingly heavy it was as though an immovable lead weight had been permanently chained to it. A thick membrane of depression draped heavily over his entire body, muffling the ambient noise and cheerful laughter of the clinic until it all sounded like a dull, distant buzz. But since he still had to survive and make a living, he had no choice but to force himself to act like absolutely nothing was wrong. That agonizing dissonance had tortured Gi-hyeon all morning, and the crushing weight was still bearing down on his spine.

“Why is your knee jutting out so far forward? Lock it in place and only lift your upper body.”

“That’s exactly what I’m doing…”

“Really? Because right now, you look exactly like the Nuri-ho launch pad, Hee-ji. You look like you’re about to blast off into space.”

“Ugh, seriously, what is your problem!”

Only after he finished perfectly mirroring the bright, genuine laughter of the athlete chuckling in front of him would a brief moment for tears finally be granted to him.

Until that moment arrived, he had to endure. With a chest feeling like it was packed with wet sand, he had to sneak glances into mirrors he normally never bothered looking at, desperately checking, ‘Am I smiling properly right now?’

So Gi-hyeon was an adult. He had been one for quite some time now. In moments like this, he often recalled the words of his mother—a woman born into wealth who had lived as a sheltered heiress until she married his father and was forced to get a job. She used to evaluate her new life with a very specific phrase.

—Gi-hyeon, does it break your heart seeing Mommy look so exhausted? But what can we do? That’s exactly why they call a career a ‘karmic burden.’ Karma is a terrifying thing.

Back then, he hadn’t understood those words at all. He didn’t know what karma meant, and he didn’t fully grasp the concept of a career. But on days exactly like today, he found it impossible to erase the thought that his mother had been absolutely right.

Especially on days when simply existing felt unbearable, he would think: If this is my karmic burden, then I am currently serving my sentence.

“Oh, Doc, didn’t you just get a message?”

“So what if I got a message? Hurry up and finish all twenty reps. I already let you skip a set because you said your pelvis hurt; you should have been done ages ago.”

“Ugh, I’m literally crying right now.”

Staring blankly at the athlete who was supposedly crying on his behalf, So Gi-hyeon wiped her dry cheek with an expressionless face and fired back.

“I’m looking right at you, and there isn’t a single tear. You haven’t even broken a sweat; your skin is perfectly powdery. It’s fascinating, really. How does Hee-ji manage to exercise without sweating a single drop?”

Completely ignoring the athlete’s indignant protests, Gi-hyeon pulled his phone from the pocket of his uniform and checked the message.

<Jo Yeon-oh>

—I’ll be late today. Sleep in first. (04:49 PM)

Staring blankly at the screen, Gi-hyeon hit the sleep button without typing a reply. He had absolutely nothing to say, and the violent marks Jo Yeon-oh had left all over him over the past few days were throbbing painfully.

After returning from Namhae, Jo Yeon-oh had been injected with suppressants, only to violently lose his mind once again. The incident in Namhae, which Gi-hyeon had desperately hoped was a one-time anomaly, had followed them all the way back to Seoul and continued to relentlessly unfold.

Gi-hyeon had been terrified, but he accepted it all the same. He firmly believed this was entirely his own fault for initiating the lie in the first place.

Having barged into Gi-hyeon’s apartment in a state of absolute madness, Jo Yeon-oh had gnawed aggressively on various parts of Gi-hyeon’s body like a feral, teething beast, leaving a trail of violent teeth marks. The following day, he had refused to separate from Gi-hyeon for even a second, acting exactly like a dog in heat desperately trying to mount a mate.

Between those relentless bouts of aggression, Jo Yeon-oh frequently lost consciousness entirely.

At first, Gi-hyeon was able to communicate with him, but eventually, all logic completely evaporated. There was a very specific reason Gi-hyeon described him as a feral beast.

—His ruts have never been this severe before. The suppressants have always worked perfectly until now… In my professional opinion, this looks like a violent side effect caused by a chemical collision between the inducer and the suppressant, but since he stubbornly refuses to leave this apartment, we can’t even run proper tests…

Manager Yoo had worn an expression of absolute devastation. It seemed he couldn’t bring himself to say anything more to So Gi-hyeon, whose eyes were sunken and bruised after being relentlessly tormented by Jo Yeon-oh for two solid days after returning from Namhae.

After hearing that explanation, Gi-hyeon’s actions had been remarkably simple. He washed Jo Yeon-oh, laid him down on the living room sofa, and then walked out to sit blankly on a swing in the apartment playground while the cleaning crew Manager Yoo summoned completely sanitized the bedroom and sterilized the apartment.

Three agonizing days passed like that. When Jo Yeon-oh finally woke up, it seemed he had absolutely zero memory of what had happened.

—It’s been three days since I came here…?

Lifting the lid off the bubbling earthen pot of strong soybean paste stew, Yeon-oh had asked the date with a look of utter disbelief. So Gi-hyeon simply watched him happily devour the meal before aggressively kicking Yeon-oh’s ass right out the door.

He had told him that if he had a shred of conscience left, he should go sleep in his own house. Thankfully, Jo Yeon-oh had left without a single word of complaint. He was clearly deeply anxious about the mountain of work that had piled up during his blackout.

Had Gi-hyeon cried a little after that? He might have shed a few tears while showering, but he had passed out from sheer exhaustion immediately afterward, leaving no time for a proper breakdown.

The message claimed he would be late today, but in reality, Jo Yeon-oh wouldn’t be returning to Gi-hyeon’s apartment at all tonight. There would simply be far too much backlogged work to handle.

Thinking of his empty apartment, Gi-hyeon decided he could finally cry once he got off work. I’ll finish all this piled-up work, and then… then I can finally make some time to cry.

So Gi-hyeon’s grief had been violently shoved aside by the demands of survival. But what else could he do? That was simply the burden an adult carrying the karmic weight of a career had to endure. Gi-hyeon harbored zero resentment toward his situation. And because he had no resentment, he had very few lingering regrets. And because his lingering regrets were so faint, the rationale justifying exactly why he still existed here was terrifyingly weak. Wait, why exactly was I staying here, right by Jo Yeon-oh’s side again? He honestly couldn’t remember.

“Doc, I’m all done!”

“You sound so proud. You were the absolute slowest one today, Hee-ji.”

Shouting ‘I don’t know!’ and sprinting away, the athlete ignored Gi-hyeon yelling after her not to run because her pelvis was still misaligned. Sighing, Gi-hyeon began organizing the exercise equipment. Despite having unused annual leave, the reason he had forced himself to come to work today was painfully clear.

Starting a few days ago, So Gi-hyeon had begun to deeply curse his own apartment—or more accurately, his own bedroom.

—So Gi-hyeon.

—…

—…Gi-hyeon-ah.

Every single moment that agonizingly familiar, intimate voice had whispered his name in the throes of passion had been violently born within the walls of his own home and his own bedroom.

How on earth was So Gi-hyeon supposed to rest in his ‘home sweet home’ after that?

He felt as though he had stepped into a suffocating swamp that paralyzed his every move. He had genuinely believed he was the only one who could escape, but the harder he thrashed, the deeper he sank. Gi-hyeon lacked the courage to look Jo Yeon-oh straight in the eye. If Jo Yeon-oh stood before him with a perfectly fine, unbothered face while Gi-hyeon was actively drowning in the mud, gasping desperately for air with only his nose and mouth exposed, So Gi-hyeon knew he would never be able to love Jo Yeon-oh again.

He desperately craved the Namhae ocean. That vast, endless embrace. The ocean that treated the brilliantly shining morning sun as nothing more than glittering scales as it flowed on in majestic indifference.

“Are you heading out for the day, Dr. So?”

Yet, no matter how hard he tried to picture it, there was only one place he could ever return to.

“Yes, it’s about time.”

Even so, he comforted himself with the thought that he could finally cry his eyes out once he got home. Even though he knew full well that, despite intentionally setting aside time to cry, shedding even a single tear would feel like a full-blown, hysterical breakdown to him.

“I need at least that small comfort to survive…”

“Huh? Did you say something, Dr. So?”

“I said there’s a piece of lint in your hair, Therapist Seung-hee.”

“Ah, really? Where?” Tapping randomly at the top of her head to appease her, Gi-hyeon finally stood up.

It was time to clock out.

***