Salt Society Chapter 23

“Don’t pretend you can’t hear me. If I tell you not to hang out with him, then don’t. That bastard seduced you into making an in-hospital tennis club and drags you around to climbing or whatever. All of that puts stress on your ankle.”

“Director Lee Bumhee is a specialist in rehabilitation medicine, and I am a physical therapist with a license stamped by the Minister of Health and Welfare. So, would you, a business administration graduate, know the state of my ankle better, or would Director Lee and I know it better?”

“I also don’t like how you get all talkative every time I tell you not to hang out with that guy. Usually, you give me damn short answers.”

He meddled in every single one of Kihyun’s friendships, saying this one has a business disease, that one is trash, another one is too ugly, and isn’t that one a married woman? No matter how he looked at it, the husband was bound to feel a sense of crisis because of Kihyun’s face, so was he going to cause domestic discord and ruin a friend’s happiness? After driving away his few friends with such words, it was absurd that he was now stepping up to say something about Bumhee.

“Just eat your food, Director Cho.”

Kihyun replied shortly and pushed the grains of rice into his dry mouth. At first, he used to bring nothing but porridge or rice with scattered grains, but from some point, he learned how to make glutinous rice that was chewy in the mouth.

Do Alphas usually live like that, doing all the housework? Since his childhood friend was a legendary schemer who would somehow drive a wedge if Kihyun so much as spoke to an Alpha, Kihyun had no way of knowing how other Alphas lived.

Still, he could tell that their physical strength was different from his own. Despite having a body that wasn’t enough for one person with all-nighters, overtime, and business trips every day, he consistently returned to Kihyun’s apartment to make meals, take care of Kihyun, and even feed the goldfish, while sometimes driving Kihyun to the hospital himself.

At least it was a relief that he hired people from a cleaning company, saying it was better to use professionals for cleaning. He hated having someone in the house, but he had no choice but to allow the hiring of a housekeeper, thinking he would otherwise make the guy die from overwork.

When looking at Cho Yeonoh, who lived a life with a schedule where he even received tutoring by inviting a fine arts professor to the company about once every two weeks to study paintings—claiming he had to since he was in charge of Naban Gallery despite graduating from business school—it was a wonder in itself that he had the physical strength to support all that work.

While moving so energetically, he possessed skeletal muscles far superior to his own with just a few evening workouts, which made Kihyun feel that they were born different.

To enter the military academy, Kihyun had consistently managed his physical strength since childhood, and even after becoming a physical therapist, he studied and exercised every day to show athletes the correct postures. Compared to Kihyun, Cho Yeonoh maintained a body like a god of war forged from iron with very little effort.

Furthermore, the two of them differed starting from the size of their rice bowls. Unlike himself, who consciously controlled his food intake for fear that a heavy body would strain his ankle, Cho Yeonoh ate a truly large amount. His appearance was clearly that of a child from a wealthy family, but the irony of Cho Yeonoh’s portion on the table being a servant-sized heap of rice was funny.

Since he had been piling towers on his meal tray back in school, Kihyun should have been used to it, but the amount—so unfitting for a delicate appearance that could be considered beautiful—was a marvel no matter how many times he saw it. Usually, a man develops a belly once he passes thirty, so it was impressive that he maintained lower abdominals that were not just flat but rock hard.

Kihyun, who was trying to push the events of last night out of his head through such useless thoughts, caught a glimpse of Yeonoh’s phone ringing. Whether it was a simple alarm, Yeonoh quietly reached out and swiped the screen of the phone sitting on the table.

“What’s the alarm for?”

When he asked because it was an ambiguous time for an alarm to go off, the guy replied while stacking spring cabbage salad on Kihyun’s front plate.

“The time to make sure you take your vitamins.”

“…Seriously, give it a rest. It’s not like I’m some eighty-year-old man; why are you taking care of my meals and supplements as if you’re performing some act of filial piety…”

It was beyond exhausting; it was so absurd that he was at the point of letting out a hollow laugh. Cho Yeonoh stared at the corners of Kihyun’s mouth with an expressionless face. He was checking to see if a proper smile was hanging on Kihyun’s mouth as he snorted. Being stared at so intensely actually made the corners of his mouth feel like they were going to drop.

Cho Yeonoh, having failed to see a smile this time as well, shrugged his shoulders and spoke.

“Then you can just take them well all at once when I tell you to. Since you didn’t listen for shit, I thought our Kihyun was hungry for his hyung’s attention.”

Good for you. Kihyun sneered only inwardly and finished his meal.

He listened to the nagging about whether he couldn’t even finish what was given while pretending to sleep, letting it go in one ear and out the other, but he had to open his eyes again because the other pulled his ear, telling him not to joke around. Because the ear that was caught hurt, Kihyun kicked Cho Yeonoh’s shin. He was able to see a third-generation chaebol hopping on one foot while clutching his shin from early morning.

⏳

So Kihyun’s greatest strength and weakness was that he did not dwell deeply on problems. That was what saved Kihyun, who almost drowned in the summer of his twenty-fifth year.

Even with his ankle crushed, he only worried about his livelihood. It was the same when he began rehabilitation. Perhaps it was because he constantly whispered to himself: let’s only think about my big toe twitching, let’s only remember that it’s a relief it didn’t remain a permanent disability. Aside from occasionally having nightmares or sometimes limping on his ankle, Kihyun did not remember that day.

Since it was all in the past, he just endured it as it was. Even if he was wounded, he was So Kihyun, and even if he was unlucky, he was So Kihyun; therefore, the one who embraced and healed the small scars created by such things also had to be So Kihyun.

However, there were times when simplifying problems like this acted as the greatest weakness. It was a situation exactly like now.

‘The hospital… It’s a bit of a hassle… and I don’t even know which department to go to.’

He simplified the problem so much that it eventually became a hassle. Furthermore, he hesitated because he didn’t know whether he should go to internal medicine or surgery. When he looked it up on the internet, only things about Omegas came up, so there was no useful information. Some information required adult certification to view, which made Kihyun wonder what on earth this was.

Since no significant illness was found in the health check-up conducted at the end of last year, he decided to really go to the hospital if it happened one more time and decided to handle today’s work for now.

“What are you doing, drinking alcohol when you just had surgery yesterday. Your knee is burning right now.”

“It wasn’t surgery yesterday, it was a week ago…”

“It’s one and the same, Mr. Park Sangho.”

Kihyun, who replied to the patient with a deliberately stern face, placed an ice pack on the knee and had him put a pillow under his leg to reduce the edema, then told him to skip the rehabilitation exercises today. He was a general ward patient, but he was said to be a nuisance who threw a fit if the treatment was even slightly delayed. Originally, he went to another hospital but came here after getting into a fight with a therapist there; by the time the rumors spread, it was too late because the rehabilitation had already begun.

Team Leader Lim liked assigning such patients to Kihyun.

—Why are you looking at me like that, Mr. So? Then should I give a patient like that to Ms. Seunghee? Tell me if you want to. I can just assign them as Ms. Seunghee’s patient.

It was out of the question. Kihyun just shook his head, saying he would do it. These kinds of nuisances actually shut their mouths and pretended to be gentlemen in front of male therapists. Rather than assigning him to Seunghee and making her suffer, it was much better for him to take the job. She was Kihyun’s senior and he had been greatly indebted to her since the beginning of his employment, so he wanted to repay her even a little on an opportunity like this.

“Stay still. You can’t do anything until the edema in your knee goes down.”

The patient didn’t answer Kihyun’s words and just clicked his tongue with a “tchk.” As Kihyun turned around with a sigh to look after another patient, a familiar face entered through the entrance of the athletes’ room.

“So Kihyun.”

“…Oh, it’s been a while.”

It was Moon Sihu, a friend of Cho Yeonoh. He was someone Cho Yeonoh—who had lived obsessed with fencing to the point of being offered a spot in the national team trials—was still in contact with; his event was the épée, and he had a long history with Cho Yeonoh. Kihyun had seen his face a few times while caught between the two, but because the other looked at him with an ambiguous gaze and subtle eyes every time, he was a face Kihyun didn’t particularly want to encounter.

“Team Leader Lim told me to come by today.”

“Ah… he stepped out for a moment.”

Kihyun replied while rubbing the area near his solar plexus where his dog tags were tucked inside his treatment uniform. There was one more reason for the discomfort: Moon Sihu was one of the athletes Team Leader Lim cherished.

Moon Sihu himself was just an average person, but because Team Leader Lim coddled him exceptionally, there was a lot of dissatisfaction among the athletes who underwent the same rehabilitation program. It was because he neglected the treatment of others while only looking after Moon Sihu’s rehabilitation.

While Team Leader Lim looked after him, Kihyun had to look after the rest of the athletes. Because the workload increased on top of the athletes he was originally in charge of, he had to give up his lunch break to treat them; it just so happened to be midsummer when the air conditioning broke down, so he had suffered like hell.

Recalling that far, Kihyun let out a sigh just enough so the other wouldn’t see and guided Moon Sihu to the office.

“He went along for an athlete’s check-up, so he’ll be back soon. Wait here.”

“By myself?”