Chapter 23: A Glimpse Through a Photograph

Guide Seo Yeong-u hadn’t visited my hospital room since the day he caused a scene with that loud Esper.

My telling him to leave didn’t mean I wanted him to stop coming completely.

In any case, it made me feel more at ease.

Having the Guide next to me made me unnecessarily sensitive, and I became conscious of his every single action.

It wasn’t just his actions; even his slightest facial expressions would seep into my mood, making it impossible for me to rest comfortably.

“What’s this?”

I pointed to the round picture next to the name.

Wondering what it was, I tilted my head and looked closer.

It looked like a photo of a collection of dolls.

“Ah, that’s a profile pic.”

“It’s short for profile picture, where you just upload a photo of yourself.”

“If you tap it, it gets bigger.”

Just as the man said, when I tapped the round image, the picture enlarged.

“They’re real cats.”

They weren’t dolls, but living cats.

Three cats, all different in appearance and color, were looking up together at a hand holding a treat.

It seemed the picture was taken while giving them a treat.

“Um, should I give you my number?”

“You can ask me if you have any more questions.”

“I’d appreciate that.”

The gentle-looking man became my fifth friend.

He must have thought I only knew four people at the Center, as he smiled and told me to contact him anytime.

“My name is Choi Hong-gi.”

“I’m twenty years old and a rookie this year.”

“I’m Kim Chul-soo.”

It felt awkward to state an age that still didn’t feel like my own, so I just gave him my name.

“Can I save you as ‘Hyung’?”

“Yeah, call me Hyung.”

“Speak casually with me, Hyung!”

Choi Hong-gi.

The man, who resembled a boiled dumpling, looked younger than his age, so hearing him call me Hyung didn’t feel strange.

Maybe it was because I had many juniors in middle school who looked just like him, but even though he was twenty, he felt like a younger brother.

“To be honest, I haven’t been at the Center long either, so I don’t have many close friends.”

“You haven’t been here long either, right?”

“Did your abilities manifest late?”

I don’t know what made him think that, but Hong-gi saw me as a rookie, just like himself.

I was a bit drained from learning how to use the phone, so I just nodded vaguely to move on.

I didn’t feel like explaining my own situation in detail, a situation I didn’t even fully understand myself.

“I’ll be coming for rehabilitation therapy all this week.”

“Call me if you’re bored.”

“Okay, you contact me too.”

Hong-gi dragged the chair back to its original table and returned to his seat.

He said his check-up time was soon, so he had to get going.

“Take care.”

“You take care going back too, Hyung!”

I wondered why he was dragging the chair.

Hong-gi picked up a long crutch from the floor and waved brightly.

It seemed his leg was injured along with his arm.

The moment I discreetly checked his leg as he turned around, the smile on my lips froze.

“I’ll call you, Hyung!”

I waved back at Hong-gi, who offered one last goodbye before the lounge’s automatic door closed.

He was a truly cheerful friend.

It couldn’t be easy to smile so brightly after losing a foot.

Thinking of Hong-gi’s right ankle, which was empty below, I looked down at my own intact limbs.

Although I was confined to a wheelchair, I was told it was only temporary paralysis and that I would soon walk without any problems.

For someone who had been in a major accident, I hadn’t lost much.

The motionless legs and the vanished memories were all things that would eventually return.

It felt strange to think that not even a single scar from the accident would remain.

‘When my memories eventually return, where will I go first on my healed legs?’

I suddenly became curious.

‘I also wondered who my older self would miss the most right now.’

As I nurtured these meaningless thoughts, I blinked at the sound of my phone dropping.

I must have spaced out and lost my grip.

Since it fell on the table, it didn’t make a loud noise.

I picked up the phone again and opened the yellow app.

The friends list, now grown to five people, was arranged in alphabetical order.

The first name was Guide Seo Yeong-u.

Just as Hong-gi had shown me, I tapped the photo, and the three cats once again filled the phone screen.

The white one looked like a Persian, that one was clearly a Russian Blue, and the one with only its face peeking from the corner of the photo looked like a common Korean Shorthair.

‘Is he raising three cats?’

‘Even one seems like it would be a handful.’

‘It suits him, though.’

The small, pale Guide’s face reminded me more of a cat than a dog.

His large eyes that looked cold when he was still, and even the way he moved slowly, silencing his presence, resembled a cat.

Among the three, he felt similar to the cat with the sullen expression caught at the edge of the photo.

The mix of white and black fur made the resemblance particularly strong.

The Guide also had such fair skin and hair so jet black it looked dyed.

Feeling like I’d been staring at a single photo for too long, I forced my eyes away.

I closed and opened my eyes, tired from focusing on the small screen, and swiped the photo to the side.

“Oh, it swipes.”

Swiping the photo like on the home screen revealed another picture.

This one was also a picture of the cats.

The next one too.

And the one after that.

“…”

My finger, which had been waiting for a human face to appear, flinched and stopped at the fourth photo.

A hollow laugh escaped me when a familiar human face appeared after seeing only pictures of small, round animals.

It was a completely different smile from the one on the man in the photo, who was hugging a cat and laughing.

He definitely looked the same, but the atmosphere was different.

‘So that’s what I look like now.’

Through the photograph, I confronted my over-thirty face for the first time.

Because I didn’t even look in the mirror when I washed up, I had never properly seen my own reflection.

It wasn’t that I was actively avoiding it, but I just hadn’t made an effort to look.

Even though sixteen years is not a short time, I surprisingly didn’t look that different.

It was just that my aura had matured and my body had gotten bigger.

There were no striking changes.

Except that my body had gotten quite a lot bigger.

Swiping to the next photo, a cat appeared again, and in the photo after that, I appeared again.

It was a photo of me sitting on a sofa, brushing a cat.

I looked damn happy.

‘…Looks like they live together.’

I got the gist just from looking at a few photos.

Seeing that he had only posted pictures of the cats and me, it seemed their relationship was much more special than I had thought.

Then again, since they were imprinted, I guess that was natural.

“Look at you, all happy.”

I snarked at the version of me in the picture, who was smiling and making eye contact with a cat at a table full of food.

Seeing that the screen wouldn’t swipe any further, it seemed to be the last photo.

Despite there being quite a few photos, the owner of the name himself never appeared even once.

It was all just me and the cats.

I wanted to see him.

“Want to see… me?”

Startled by the inner thought that had popped out of my mouth, I tilted my head.

I didn’t want to see him.

Because he kept coming to mind and lingering in my thoughts even when he wasn’t there, the feeling of not wanting to see him was actually stronger.

However, I was curious what he looked like in a photograph.

I was curious to see Guide Seo Yeong-u’s appearance captured in a bright, happy photo.

Not his usual hunched-over, wary expression.

‘I’m Seo Yeong-u. Feel free to speak casually.’

I wanted to see his smiling face again, like on the day he first told me his name.

“…So that means I do want to see him.”

I smiled self-deprecatingly at my own contradictory thoughts and scratched my forehead, avoiding the surgical tape.

He was clearly a burdensome and uncomfortable presence, yet it felt empty now that he was gone.

He seemed like he would visit persistently, but the fact that he hadn’t shown his face at all made me even more conscious of him.

“What are you mumbling about by yourself?”

I lifted my head toward the voice that had appeared without a sound.

It was that Esper.

That loud guy.

The man, his dazzling face shining again today, plopped down in the seat across from me and glared when I didn’t react.

The way his lips twitched suggested he had something to say.

Of course he did.

“What.”

“You had a phone?”

“Then why the f*ck are you ignoring all the calls!”

He stopped short of what he was about to say, saw my phone, and immediately raised his voice without warning.

“Yoon Bo-dam is worried because he can’t reach you!”

“If you have it, then answer it, you b*stard!”

‘Who the hell is Yoon Bo-dam?’

I tilted my head, watching the man get worked up all by himself.

The more I looked at him, the more he seemed to be the very embodiment of a person I despise.

To think I was close with a guy like that.

“Is your phone just for decoration?”

“Huh? Huh?!”

Angry that I wasn’t speaking, the man raised his hand to slam the table but hit his own knee instead.

He seemed to have tried contacting me quite a lot, but I hadn’t received a single call.

It looked like he had been continuously trying my old number.

“Hey, are you deaf too?!”

Aran-noona had intentionally set me up with a new number to cut off outside contact, thinking I would still be confused.

That’s why my phone’s contact list only had five people, including the newly added Hong-gi.

“Kim Chul-soo, you b*stard! Answer me!”

Instead of telling him my number had changed, I remained silent.

I waited until the man, who had been shouting his head off alone, was red in the face with frustration before I finally spoke.

“Aren’t you going to apologize?”

At my first words, the man’s fierce eyes shot up, and he bit his lip.

He had an apology to make.

It was an apology he should have given to the Guide, not me, but I decided to accept it on his behalf.

If those two met, they would definitely clash again.

“Apologize.”

“For throwing Guide Seo Yeong-u and hurting him.”

I continued speaking, conscious of trying not to let the words ‘my Guide’ slip out.

The man, baring his straight teeth as he clenched his jaw, squeezed his eyes shut as if preparing to apologize obediently.

I didn’t know what kind of warning he had received, but it was effective.