Chapter 89: Unspoken Concerns

Suhan’s hands were full of shopping bags. He had said he’d be back in a moment, and it seemed he had gone to buy some food.

“Wooju-ssi, please have some too. I bought plenty.”

Appetizing rice bowls and porridge for Jitae, whose stomach wasn’t in good shape, were quickly laid out on the table.

“Manager-nim, please have some with us.”

“I have to head to the office. I need to adjust Jitae’s schedule as well. Please take good care of this guy while I’m gone.”

Suhan ruffled Jitae’s hair roughly before quietly leaving the hospital room.

“I hate porridge because it’s hot…….”

“Stop whining and sit here.”

Wooju tapped the spot next to him on the sofa. Jitae approached and sat down without another word. After placing a disposable spoon in his hand, Wooju pushed the porridge bowl as far forward as he could.

Fortunately, Jitae didn’t grumble further and started eating quietly. However, his initial enthusiasm soon waned, and his hand movements slowed down. Just as Jitae was about to put down his spoon without having finished even half of it, Wooju glared at him with hawk-like eyes.

“Hey, I told you to eat it all.”

“I’m… full.”

“So what? Do you have any idea why you collapsed?”

Wooju had been receiving treatment in the bed right next to Jitae in the emergency room. Because of that, he had unintentionally overheard the doctor explaining Jitae’s condition to his manager.

When the doctor pointed out the severe nutritional imbalance and asked if he didn’t eat properly, and the manager replied that he often went a whole day without a proper meal, Wooju was so shocked that he nearly fell over backward.

To think someone of that size was suffering from malnutrition in this day and age. Most people who saw Jitae probably would never have imagined it.

“I’ll eat it later.”

He wasn’t some child complaining about side dishes, was he?

Wooju suddenly recalled the days when he was young, whining to his mother that he wouldn’t eat rice if there wasn’t any meat because he didn’t want to eat vegetables; a sense of guilt toward his mother welled up within him.

“If you don’t eat it, I’m going to shove it into your mouth by force, so get that straight.”

“That……”

“What.”

“Are you saying you’re going to feed me?”

Huh? Wooju fell into deep thought with a blank expression. If he could, he would have loved to force those jaws open and pour the porridge straight in, but he couldn’t do such a violent thing to a patient.

“Something like that.”

“Then I’ll eat.”

Unexpected words flowed from the mouth of the guy who had been insisting he wouldn’t eat. His shining, sparkling expression was quite absurd.

Was he doing this on purpose, knowing full well that Wooju wouldn’t actually feed him, just to see what he would do?

“You think I can’t do it?”

Wooju laughed confidently and picked up the spoon. He charged toward the porridge, which was finely chopped with beef and vegetables. He scooped up a generous spoonful and brought it toward Jitae’s mouth.

“Open up.”

Jitae wiggled his lips strangely before slowly opening his mouth. The porridge Wooju scooped up passed through lips that had quickly regained their vitality and flowed smoothly inside.

“You clearly said with your own mouth that you’d eat if I fed you, right?”

“Yeah.”

Wooju didn’t give up and continued to scoop up the porridge. Jitae was now accustomed to it, opening his mouth and accepting the food well, like a baby bird receiving food from its mother.

Wooju had thought he was just bluffing to get fed, but Jitae seemed to grow increasingly cheerful the more he ate. It was when Wooju was tilting his head and scooping the porridge, which was now almost showing the bottom, once again.

Knock, knock.

“Hyung…….”

Right on cue, Dongha knocked on the hospital room door and stepped inside, looking around. He froze stiff upon discovering the two men sitting side-by-side on the sofa, one feeding the other.

“S-sorry for interrupting.”

He didn’t exactly know what he was interrupting, but Dongha tried to close the door again with an awkward smile.

“Dongha-ya, just come in. You’re not interrupting anything.”

Wooju told him to finish the rest himself and slowly stood up from the sofa. He approached Dongha, who was standing awkwardly in front of the door, and took the shopping bag from him.

“Do you really only need comfortable clothes?”

“Yes. I came straight from the set, so I couldn’t change.”

Jitae stared blankly at the two of them as they chatted naturally. They seemed much friendlier than when he had seen them during the previous shoot. Plus, what did he call him when he came in? ‘Hyung’?

“Didn’t you have a hard time getting into the house? The security is unnecessarily tight at that apartment.”

“No, I was fine.”

As Dongha giggled, Wooju playfully ruffled his hair. At that moment, the disposable plastic spoon in Jitae’s hand snapped exactly in half with a crack.

Setting aside Kang Wooju’s unhesitating touch, the expression of the manager named Park Dongha bothered him even more. Seeing him accept Wooju’s touch while looking somewhat shy was incredibly grating.

Whether he felt Jitae’s stinging gaze or really had somewhere else to be, Dongha left after a short conversation with Wooju.

“Why did you come?”

“To bring your clothes.”

Wooju shook the shopping bag as if to show it off to Jitae.

“Did your manager bring them? Directly from your house?”

“Yeah. I asked him to.”

Wooju, who had felt he couldn’t leave Jitae’s side until he woke up after being treated, had called Dongha and asked him to pack some clothes.

“Eat all of that while I go change.”

Watching Wooju’s retreating back as he leisurely exited the room, Jitae opened his palm. In it lay two halves of a plastic piece that was once a spoon—the one he had crushed without realizing it moments ago.

“I haven’t even been to Wooju’s house even once yet…….”

Leaving behind a cry that, as expected, would never reach its target today, Jitae collapsed powerlessly onto the sofa. Of course, he was scolded by Wooju, who returned after changing his clothes, for doing so.

Wooju watched over Jitae until he had scraped the porridge bowl clean to the very bottom, then sent him back to bed, insisting he needed absolute rest. Then, he gathered the trash and tidied up the table.

“You seem much closer than when I saw you last time.”

Jitae tossed the comment out casually to Wooju, who was moving busily.

“With Dongha? Well… we’ve been sticking together quite a bit.”

“Are you two close enough to call each other hyung and dongsaeng?”

“He seemed to find it difficult to work with me every time. I felt uncomfortable just watching him, so I just told him to call me that.”

Dongha had been the one to suggest dropping the formalities first, anyway.

Whether it was the influence of having a younger sister, Wooju would unconsciously feel a deep desire to take care of younger ones who were about three or four years his junior.

It was the same with Seolah, whom he had seen on set before, and Wooju was also the one who took the best care of Yunkwon, the youngest on their team.

“Aren’t you too unreserved?”

“He’s cute. Like a younger brother.”

“Cute…….”

Jitae muttered, mimicking Wooju’s words, before pulling the blanket all the way over his head.

“Are you going to sleep?”

“…….”

“Then I’m going to go throw out the trash.”

With those words, Wooju left the room again, carrying the trash bag he had neatly bundled up. After properly disposing of the trash according to the hospital’s guidelines, Wooju dusted off his hands.

He was about to head back into Jitae’s room when he remembered how Jitae had been all prepared to sleep when he left—completely buried under the blanket.

He thought that if he went in now, he might disturb his sleep for no reason, so Wooju headed toward a vending machine he saw in the distance.

The doctor had mentioned he hadn’t been sleeping well, so he planned to wait until he was sound asleep before going back in.

As he naturally took a bill from his wallet and inserted it into the machine, the drink slots with remaining stock lit up green. He chose an electrolyte drink, and soon after, the drink dropped to the bottom with a clunk.

Wooju walked to a bench on one side of the walking path, sat down, and cracked open the drink can. He took a cool, refreshing gulp with a crisp sound.

Perhaps because the weather was pleasant, there were many patients out for a walk. Wooju stared blankly at the people walking side-by-side with their guardians or sitting in wheelchairs and admiring the flowers blooming in the flower beds.

‘You shouldn’t have… you shouldn’t have gotten hurt…….’

He recalled the words Jitae had muttered distractedly earlier with a soul-less face. The sight of him trembling all over with a face drained of all color had been enough to fluster even Wooju.

Of course, he might have lost his rationality, weighed down by guilt because an innocent person got severely hurt because of him. But.

‘If you end up like me…….’

The follow-up words particularly bothered him.

“‘If you end up like me’…”

What did that mean? Did he just mean he shouldn’t get sick like himself, who ended up collapsing from not eating or sleeping properly?

“…….”

Wooju sat on the bench for a long time, lost in thought. He stayed in his seat until the drink was finished and the people around him began heading back inside one by one.

The desire to know more about Jitae boiled up inside his mind. He was now more convinced than ever that this wasn’t just a simple matter.

Furthermore, the fact that he said he had collapsed often in the past and that this level of illness was nothing bothered him as well.

But no matter how much he pondered, it was a problem he couldn’t solve. Unfortunately, Wooju didn’t have the answer key.

Feeling a sense of inevitability and emptiness, he slowly headed back into the hospital building.

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