Hazardous Concentration Chapter 4

“I’ve felt it for a long time, but Nurse Na, your days must be very busy. To show interest in other people’s affairs on top of your own work.”

“Haha, I guess I am a bit curious.”

Knowing he couldn’t miss the sarcasm, his oily, unfazed response made it impossible to tell if he simply had a good personality or if he was just thick-skinned. Nurse Park glared at him in annoyance and walked into the ward.

“But if he was your patient, he must have been in a private room or a VIP room. His clothes didn’t look that wealthy.”

Nurse Park, walking ahead, stared at him quietly.

“He was dressed neatly, but if you look closely, the cuffs were quite frayed, and the soles of his shoes had been repaired.”

Nurse Park’s mouth dropped open slightly in surprise.

“To catch that in such a short time. You are truly incredible.”

At that, the resident, Nurse Na, scratched his cheek as if embarrassed.

“I have a lot of interest in fashion, so I’m a bit sensitive to clothes.”

“Amazing. Simply amazing.”

It wasn’t sarcasm; she was genuinely impressed.

“Hehe. Thank you for the compliment. More importantly, Nurse Park, I saw him. The guardian from the top-floor VIP room in our hospital. He went up just now.”

“…Is that so?”

“In my life, I’ve never seen a man that handsome. He was so handsome that I didn’t even feel jealous. He doesn’t look like an entertainer or a model, what does he do?”

Nurse Park let out a deep sigh. Nurse Na’s strength was that he was curious and his temperament wasn’t sharp. But sometimes, that curiosity felt like a shortcoming. This was exactly one of those times.

“Nurse Na, here we go again. Why are you so curious about everything? What will you gain by knowing? Just let it be.”

“Ah, I’m just curious. Seeing him use a room that costs hundreds per day for several years, it’s certain he has money to burn. Not only the person himself but the aura of the people he employs—they don’t seem like ordinary people. Nurse Park, haven’t you heard anything?”

Facing the full-blown bombardment of questions from the resident, Nurse Park shook her head firmly.

∞ ∞ ∞

The dictionary defines “different” as follows:

「1. Not the same as each other. 2. Having something that stands out compared to the ordinary.」

Having a body different from others was less of a “special” trait and more of a misfortune. Even though he had done nothing wrong, he could never be proud in front of others, and liking someone felt like a burden of guilt.

In his younger, naive days, knowing his body was different didn’t hit him as something serious. But as he grew older and learned about his body in detail, Eunhoo began to feel repulsed by himself.

The most prominent aspect was the changes in his body. His friends, who had been no different from him until recently, saw their voices deepen and their heights increase. Whenever they met after summer break, the disparity was even more obvious.

When his peers giggled and showed off their armpit and pubic hair, Eunhoo would look down at his own hairless body and feel it once again.

That he was different.

Perhaps because he was intersex, Eunhoo suffered from atrichia (absence of hair). With not a single strand of hair in his armpits or groin, he understood what the other kids were talking about intellectually, but he had obviously never experienced it himself.

Eunhoo felt increasingly alienated, and his already quiet nature became even more reserved. However, he couldn’t talk about this fact anywhere. He couldn’t add any more worries to his parents, who were already always anxious and concerned about him.

So, he swallowed it all alone. When was it? He happened to turn on the TV and saw a documentary introducing animals born with different appearances.

It was the same in human society, but in the world of animals and insects, appearing different was a curse. Most were soon discovered by predators and killed or abandoned before long.

Among them, the episode that remained in Eunhoo’s memory the longest was the story of a baby lion born with albinism. In a movie or cartoon, it would have overcome its difficulties and survived brilliantly, but reality was different. That child was eventually abandoned by its mother and siblings and died.

At the time, Eunhoo empathized with the baby lion and felt rage. He cursed and resented the mother lion, asking how she could abandon her own cub just because it was born different. But only after growing older and learning a little more about the world could Eunhoo understand the mother lion’s state of mind.

The young Eunhoo had focused only on the lion cub, but looking back as an adult, the mother had other cubs besides that one. To protect them, the mother had no choice but to be heartless. Eunhoo recalled the scene where the mother lion looked back several times as she abandoned the young cub.

Ding!

Eunhoo got off the elevator, following the crowd of people pouring out. Realizing he had gotten off one floor lower than intended while distracted, he immediately turned around, but the interior was already full of new passengers. He couldn’t muster the courage to wedge himself into that gap.

One floor, it should be fine, right? Under normal circumstances, it wouldn’t have mattered, but because he had been limping since last night, he was a little worried.

With a limping gait, he opened the emergency exit door and stepped down, one cautious step at a time. Fortunately, there weren’t many stairs.

Before long, he reached the lobby. As he had felt earlier, the lobby was swarming with people, as if he had arrived at a bustling marketplace.

He saw several patients dragging their IV poles, and children supporting their elderly mothers. Eunhoo stood a step away from it all. He felt so exhausted that he couldn’t even hear the noise, which was buzzing loudly enough to make his ears fall off. His future felt as bleak as wandering alone in a desert without a single signpost.

Just a few years ago, Eunhoo’s family had been wealthy and harmonious. It hadn’t always been that way; when he was eleven, the restaurant his father ran hit the jackpot, and life suddenly became comfortable.

They moved from living in a rented 18-pyeong villa to owning and living in a 100-pyeong mansion. Their living conditions improved beyond recognition. Before that, he used to wear clothes and bags handed down from others, but that was no longer necessary. He could buy whatever he needed without worrying about money.

However, as the saying goes, “Every joy has its shadow.” Like the moon that wanes after it waxes, dark clouds began to gather over their house little by little.

The restaurant, which had always captivated people’s hearts with his father’s innovative ideas, began to hit one snag after another.

His father, who believed that the virtue would return if you gave to others, trusted people far too much. Starting with an acquaintance he treated like a younger brother embezzling company money and disappearing, incidents occurred where the menus they were developing were leaked externally.

It was a menu he had spent three years working on. When a project that had invested billions just to develop that single menu collapsed overnight, his father’s company wobbled uncontrollably.

His downfall happened in an instant. They said that even a rich family can last for three years after going bankrupt, but that was a story irrelevant to Eunhoo’s family.

On top of that, his father, who was running around trying to escape the crisis, vanished, leaving Eunhoo and his mother behind.

It was only after his father disappeared that he learned they had used loan sharks. Loan sharks swarmed the tiny single room they had moved into, pressuring and threatening Eunhoo and his mother.

It was the beginning of hell.

“…”

Eunhoo took a step forward. As he exited the hospital, the early summer sunlight stung his eyes.

“Of all days, the weather has to be nice.”

Unlike him, who was depressed, the world was peaceful, as if nothing had happened.

He had just said his final farewell to his mother’s primary care physician. When he said he had to go to a smaller hospital because they couldn’t afford the treatment costs, the doctor didn’t ask further and wrote up a medical certificate. That certificate was now clutched in Eunhoo’s hand. Compared to the days he had spent agonizing over it, it ended all too simply. But rather than feeling relieved, he felt miserable.

Ten years ago, his mother was diagnosed with heart failure at this hospital. Even before that, she had complained of fatigue easily and had symptoms of dyspnea even after walking a little, but he had merely thought it was from a lack of exercise. However, one day when he returned from school, he found his mother collapsed, having lost consciousness. Because it happened to be the day the housekeeper didn’t come, his mother was transported to the hospital after being left unattended for several hours. Fortunately, she regained consciousness not long after, and her illness was revealed.