Come Back

Outside the hospital building, at the end of a small path, a smoking area was surrounded by trees. The cicadas were chirping loudly, as if they knew that summer was coming to an end. Thanks to this, I was able to forget for a moment that I was in the city.

There were five or six benches in the smoking area with a roof, but perhaps because of the midday heat, only three people, including Yongjae, were smoking.

Yongjae stared blankly at the two men sitting on the bench diagonally opposite each other. They were men in hospital gowns, each smoking a cigarette on their fingers, looking at their phones together and giggling. They looked to be no older than sixteen or seventeen, and both had bleached yellow hair.

Maybe it was because I had been a baseball player until high school and lived a strict group life, but whenever I witnessed such a scene, I kept clenching my fists. I wanted to scold him, saying that even if you smoke, it is not something to smoke proudly. I usually have a personality that is said to be foolishly innocent, but it was especially difficult for me to maintain my composure in such a situation.

“Leave it alone. Kids these days don’t listen to you.”

“… … ”

Someone came up and squeezed my shoulder, then came over and sat down next to me. It was Representative Lim. How did he know I was going to say something? Yongjae glanced at Representative Lim with his narrow, slitted eyes.

“Those guys aren’t scared by your size. They’re the ones who live without a care in the world.”

Representative Lim took off his jacket, took a pack of cigarettes out of his pocket, and pulled at the knot of his tie. His already grim expression was frowning, perhaps because of the heat.

“What did the doctor say?”

“The test results show there is nothing wrong.”

“Then why…”

Representative Lim, who had lit a cigarette, answered listlessly while blowing a long puff of smoke into the air.

“It’s a phenomenon that can occur even if there is no physical abnormality. They say that’s what the mind is like, but they’re just listing things in difficult terms…”

He sucked on the filter one more time and continued.

“Anyway, it’s fortunate that there’s nothing wrong. There’s a high chance that things will get better naturally as time passes.”

“… … ”

“Don’t stress me out too much. Don’t force me.”

“Don’t force me…”

“If he insists that he is Choi Hong-seo, don’t deny it and just leave him alone.”

Representative Lim, who was looking at Yongjae’s rock-like profile as he nodded, tilted his head to one side while clicking the filter.

“But you know…”

“yes.”

“Why Choi Hongseo?”

“… … ”

“Hye-an, did that guy Choi Hong-seo have any contact with you? Were you two close without me knowing?”

Yongjae shook his head. His expression seemed to indicate that he too was puzzled by that point.

“No. Before my brother left ‘Titan,’ we only met on music shows and said hello. And that must have only been a few times, right?”

“Choi Hong-seo was doing well back then, but he wasn’t a top star yet. There’s no way Yoon Hye-an would have envied someone who wasn’t even a top star… No matter how much I think about it, I just can’t understand why it had to be Choi Hong-seo, someone she didn’t even know well.”

“Come to think of it, there was some talk that the two of them looked alike.”

“Was it? Do those two look alike? I’m not sure.”

Representative Lim tilted his head with an even more puzzled expression.

“They both look young, and their facial features look cold, but they become cute when they smile. People say they look alike.”

Representative Lim looked like he couldn’t agree.

“When did Hyean ever smile in front of the camera, even if it was fake? Since meeting CEO Cho, he’s always kept his mouth shut and acted haughty wherever he went. He has a completely different image from Choi Hong-seo, who did whatever he was told to do on every program to somehow promote the group.”

Representative Lim snorted and brought the filter to his lips. He took a drag on his cigarette and spat out a word along with the smoke.

“Well, Choi Hong-seo was also X-gun with that refreshing face. If you think about the things Choi Hong-seo did behind the scenes with that face, the two might look similar.”

“But it was concluded that Choi Hong-seo was the victim.”

“Do you believe the trial results? If the trial is the victim, then it’s the victim? It’s because of Dasak that I went to the host bar. A truly innocent person would never have anything to do with that kind of thing in the first place.”

“That’s true, but… being innocent isn’t a crime.”

“What is this?”

The disgruntled face of Representative Lim looked Yongjae up and down.

“The fact that I ended up working at that host bar was because of the famous CEO who had planned it from the beginning. After that, he would gradually corner me. Well, since all my weaknesses were already taken care of, I couldn’t escape. Choi Hong-seo wasn’t the only one who fell for that method.”

“Since when have you become so sophisticated and use words like ‘step by step’?”

“But I watched it closely because it happened in the industry I work in. Just because you work in the entertainment industry doesn’t mean you deserve to be exploited in that way.”

At Yongjae’s timid protest, Representative Lim clicked his tongue and shook his head.

“You’re good at everything, but the problem is that you’re too withdrawn. What good is a guy who works in this field who only likes people?”

Then, as if he didn’t care about other people’s business, he narrowed his eyes and took another drag on his cigarette.

“Anyway, why Choi Hongseo out of the blue?”

“Hyun-i hyung is very proud of his appearance. People often say that he looks like me, so I was a little nervous, but it wasn’t anything serious. There wasn’t anything else that I could call a connection.”

“If you’re going to insist that he’s a different person, I hope he changes his temper a bit.”

The sigh of relief that Yoon Hye-an had regained consciousness only lasted for a moment.

For the past few days, the patient has been insisting that she is not Yoon Hye-an, but Choi Hong-seo. She has cried, yelled, gotten angry, and even begged for people to believe her. Because of this, the patient has had to undergo all sorts of detailed brain tests and even psychological tests.

“After being like this for several days, I’m starting to think that it would be better to just close my eyes and lie down.”

Representative Lim stood up from the bench, spitting out a short curse. No matter what, how could he say such a scary thing? Yongjae also stood up after Representative Lim, glancing at his broad back.

Representative Lim picked up the jacket that had been hanging on the bench and shook it out as he suddenly spoke to the bench across from him.

“Students.”

The two men who had been burying their noses in the cell phone screen instinctively looked this way. Representative Lim smiled broadly and gestured to the cigarette butts on the floor.

“Cigarette butts should be thrown in the ashtray.”

“… … ”

“hurry?”

The guys frowned. It wasn’t like they were telling them not to smoke, but to throw their cigarette butts in the ashtray. They looked at them as if they were dumbfounded. The guys looked at the two men with bulky bodies in turn, and slowly picked up the cigarette butts with reluctant faces and threw them in the ashtray.

Only then did Representative Lim walk toward the hospital building with a satisfied smile. He was someone you never knew. Yongjae shook his head and followed him.

When I went up to the sickroom, the patient was standing in front of the closet by the window, rummaging through the drawers. Director Lim entered the room cautiously so as not to upset the patient.

“Hye-ah… No, that’s right, Hong-seo. How are you feeling today?”

Choi Hong-seo stopped his hands and stared at Representative Lim’s face. No matter how much he insisted that he was Choi Hong-seo and not Yoon Hye-an, no one had listened to him for the past few days.

What I saw in the mirror was clearly Yoon Hye-an’s face.

Now, I even wondered if I was crazy. In fact, I was really Yoon Hye-an, but was something strange happening during the accident that made me believe I was Choi Hong-seo? I also thought about that.

But for that to be the case, he remembered everything related to Choi Hong-seo too clearly. Date of birth, family relationships, debut date, activity history… The information he found on the Internet and his own memories were all consistent.

On the other hand, I had no memory of Yun Hye-an.

As someone in the same industry, all I could find were simple information and rumors I had heard here and there. I looked through Yoon Hye-an’s Wikipedia just in case, but I didn’t even feel like I could remember anything.

But as the days passed, Choi Hong-seo was able to accept this one thing.

No matter how much I insisted to them that I was not Yoon Hye-an, and no matter how much I revealed every single piece of information and memory related to Choi Hong-seo, no one would see me as Choi Hong-seo and not Yoon Hye-an.

It can’t be helped.

It’s possible for someone else’s soul to reside in someone else’s body.

If someone were to claim that, he would be judged as not being in his right mind. It was something that would not be on a TV entertainment program that looked for strange people. It was fortunate that he was not locked up in a mental hospital.

So I made up my mind.

Even if I were to sit in this hospital room and show them the entire journey of Choi Hong-seo’s life, their minds would not change. That would not be proof that I was Choi Hong-seo, but rather that I was Choi Hong-seo’s stalker.

“I’m going to be discharged from the hospital.”

“Discharge? Why?”

“His limbs are fine and his head is fine, so there’s no reason for him to stay any longer. And it’s a waste of money to go to the hospital.”