Chapter 15: Escape into the Dark

Whether I should call this a hospital or a rehabilitation center… this place was somewhat lax.

While items like knives or scissors were banned to prevent self-harm, it wasn’t a place that cut off everything at the source like a psychiatric ward.

For one, the cutlery provided for meals consisted of proper spoons and chopsticks.

He used an IV stand, the bathroom sink and tub were standard ceramic, the shower stall was glass, and the mirror was just an ordinary one.

It seemed the only things prohibited were alcohol, caffeine, and items that were blatantly bladed weapons.

In other words, it was an environment where he could commit suicide whenever he wished, should he choose to.

‘Not that I’m planning to kill myself…’

Yoon Heesu thought, rummaging through the grass.

Several gaps leading outside.

Corners where the security patrol routes were loose.

As he squeezed his body a bit through a narrow crevice, he saw an old road where cars were likely to pass.

Yoon Heesu slipped back inside, brushed the dirt and leaves off his clothes, and returned to the walking path as if nothing had happened.

Two days since he had been permitted to take walks alone.

Avoiding the eyes of the guards, Yoon Heesu had been rummaging through various spots along the walls and bushes.

And today, he had found it.

This gap.

Unlike the places he had discovered until now, it was large enough to squeeze his body through, and although narrow, it connected to the road and looked relatively safe.

After finishing his walk—which was barely a walk—he went about his daily routine with a feigned composure.

Though one could hardly call it a routine.

And then, night.

Long after the lights were out, Yoon Heesu, who had been staring at the ceiling with his eyes wide open, sat up with a start after the shadow of a guard’s flashlight passed by his window.

He had secretly discarded his sleep aids, so he was wide awake.

Every entrance to the building was locked at night, but there were a few spots where doors could be opened by hand from the inside.

He had already identified all such spots over the last two days.

In slippers, hospital gown, and wearing nothing but a padded jacket over it, Yoon Heesu followed the route the guard had already passed to get outside.

Standing beside the side door and looking up, the five-story building stood silently in the darkness.

It might have been eerie to have a building like this in the middle of the mountains, but the structure just looked tidy.

Avoiding the illuminated windows, Yoon Heesu walked back and forth between the walking path and the lawn marked with [Keep Off] signs, heading toward the wall he had scouted earlier that day.

No matter how much they treated it like confinement, it wasn’t a prison.

If one was determined to leave, there were holes enough to get out.

Right here, like this gap.

He bent his body through the crevice and slipped out.

It was hard to see from the inside because it was obscured by bushes, but it was a hole large enough to crawl through even while wearing a jacket.

Stepping out from the hole and setting a foot down, Yoon Heesu was momentarily flustered.

There wasn’t flat ground immediately, but a fairly high drop without stairs.

He hadn’t realized it was this deep when he saw it during the day.

It looked roughly just a bit shorter than his own height.

Debating what to do, he simply jumped down.

“Ugh…”

A stinging pain shot up through both feet in his slippers.

He might have hurt himself, but he was accustomed to pain.

Accustomed to enduring it, too.

Yoon Heesu began to trudge forward.

Once clear of the wall, the surroundings were dark—a country road without a single streetlight.

Because the faint light of the crescent moon was all he had, he couldn’t see well in front of him.

It was fortunate, at least, that his night vision was sharp.

On either side were quiet, fallow fields of the off-season, and a bumpy, mud-caked asphalt road of unknown origin.

It was a relief at least that there were no flying insects due to the winter.

A chilly winter wind blew in.

Yoon Heesu pulled both sides of his padded jacket together and continued to walk feebly.

His feet and ankles ached.

Dried tree branches looming on either side, overgrown grass, the distinct winter smell of burning wood.

Puddles here and there were frozen white, and the air entering his nostrils was sharp and cold.

He couldn’t tell if the whoosh, whoosh sounds heard from afar were the wind or the cries of birds in winter.

Do birds cry in winter…?

Perhaps it was a ghost.

All sorts of thoughts crossed his mind.

When he was young, he had a memory of being abandoned alone on a road like this.

It was on his way back from a charity performance at some rural orphanage.

Though it was called a rural orphanage, it was quite large, and the guests invited were significant.

Of all things, Yoon Heesu had flubbed an entire measure of the piano piece he had practiced so intensely.

Even now, he couldn’t understand that day.

How could he, after practicing so much, mangle not just one note but an entire measure?

‘I really am an idiot.’

There was no other way to explain it.

In front of everyone, his adoptive parents smiled and said, “Our Heesu must be nervous,” but due to his adoptive mother’s fingernails digging into his shoulder, Yoon Heesu could only force an unnatural smile.

Naturally, his adoptive parents were furious, and on the way back, they made Yoon Heesu get out on a rural road just like this.

Telling him to find his own way home.

‘That day, too…’

Back then, too, he had walked endlessly along a road like this.

In the memories remaining now, the most intense emotion was fear.

It wasn’t quite that scary now, but to a young child, a dark rural road was a frightening place where a monster might jump out from somewhere at any moment.

Fortunately, he hadn’t walked that road to the end.

Just when he was thinking he might die walking like this, or get snatched by a monster…

As he walked through the darkness weeping, someone grabbed his hand.

That day was a moonless night… truly pitch-black.

At first, he was terrified enough to pass out, but he knew from the touch of the hand gently gripping his wrist and leading him that it was someone who had come to fetch him.

The boy had said something, but he hadn’t heard it properly because he was crying.

He had never asked about it since, but it must have been Kwon Seungjae.

Because Kwon Seungjae was the only peer who knew Yoon Heesu had been abandoned.

“Are you okay? Stop crying…”

A low voice had said.

He couldn’t recall exactly what was said now.

All he remembered was following Kwon Seungjae while crying and then losing consciousness right there.

Afterward, he had woken up at home with an IV line in his arm.

He had wanted to thank Kwon Seungjae, but after recovering for a few days from his exhaustion, he had to leave for a one-month camp his adoptive mother had sent him to.

That place, named a Student Etiquette Camp, was a facility for teaching etiquette, academics, and hobbies needed by each student.

He had spent his vacation there, cut off from the outside world with etiquette training and piano lessons.

He returned home around the start of the new term, but Kwon Seungjae had left for a short language study trip abroad as if passing him by, so they couldn’t meet.

He had heard in passing that Han Suyeon had gone on that same study trip.

In that haphazard way, he reached the present day without ever mentioning the events of that day.

“…”

Yoon Heesu sighed, gazing at the road stretching into the distance.

The country road had no end in sight, only darkness.

He felt as though something was lurking between the shadows of the densely packed vinyl greenhouses.

He began to regret coming out.

His feet hurt, his ankles throbbed, but it was too late to go back.

Was it better to keep going forward, or to return…?

He didn’t know.

He simply kept moving his feet forward.

He was a useless person who couldn’t even make simple decisions like this, anyway.

So why on earth had he come out here?

‘It’s because of Han Suyeon, of course.’

But if so, he should have thought it through before coming, yet he had just mindlessly… Yoon Heesu sighed.

‘I’m so tired…’

Exhausted, his entire body felt limp.

His vision was blurry.

As if his sight had blurred with tears.

Yoon Heesu stopped dead in his tracks.

He couldn’t move a muscle.

A preposterous sense of helplessness swept over his entire body, leaving him unable to do anything but stand there.

“…”

There were times like this.

When his body felt as if it didn’t belong to him.

As if the connection between brain and body had been severed, he would find it hard to move even a single finger.

And it had to strike right now.

The moment he exhaled, his legs gave way, and he slumped onto the faded asphalt.

Yoon Heesu gazed blankly at the dark landscape before him.

It was fortunate at least that he could still breathe.

His head began to droop.

His body went limp as if he had turned into a sponge.

Just when he was slumped over, head bowed low, his limbs hanging lifelessly.

The space behind him lit up brightly, and he thought he heard the sound of a vehicle engine.

He couldn’t tell if it was a hallucination or reality.

Someone grabbed his wrist and pulled him up.

He heard the sound of someone breathing heavily.

“…Kwon Seungjae?”

Just like on that young day, Yoon Heesu called out the other’s name.

The person said something, but it didn’t register in his ears.

He felt dizzy… and as the thought that a fever was rising in his body crossed his mind, Yoon Heesu closed his eyes right there.

***

It was a troublesome situation.

At dawn, he heard the news that Yoon Heesu had escaped from the rehabilitation center grounds.

The guards scattered immediately to find him, and he wondered if it was worth the effort of driving all night long.

He had discovered him on the path behind the rehab center.

Yoon Heesu had walked for a staggering three hours and was several kilometers away from the facility, and his physical state was a wreck.

Deciding to go and fetch him himself instead of the guards to avoid agitating him further, he drove along the road, only to spot Yoon Heesu staggering in the distance.

But his appearance was strange.

He suddenly stopped dead in his tracks, stood still, then slumped down limply.

Just like a sandcastle collapsing.

Stepping out of the car and grabbing his wrist to lift him up, Heesu stared with unfocused eyes, muttering at a place he couldn’t even identify.

“…Kwon Seungjae?”

“Ha.”

He couldn’t even say anything more to Yoon Heesu, who had lost consciousness right there.

After lifting his light body and placing him in the passenger seat, Han Suyeon returned to the driver’s seat, stared intently at the boy who had fainted, and muttered.

“You’re looking for Kwon Seungjae again, Yoon Heesu.”

Just like more than a decade ago, exactly when he had grabbed his wrist on a road just like this.