╔═━▒ ۞ ▒━═╗
STIGMA
╚═━▒ ۞ ▒━═╝

Yi-Seo

I’m headed to the home for the aged for some much-needed answers. It takes me less than the usual twenty-five minutes to get there today because the roads are not as jammed as they would be during any other time of the day. The early morning summer showers have left small muddy puddles along the path that leads up to the dilapidated building.

There’s no one out in the front garden, and everything is unusually serene and silent as I gently push open the front door and head towards Se-Young’s room that’s on the far end of the right-side aisle.

I’m welcome here any time of the day on any day, so I usually don’t make it a point to meet the matron every time.

The door to Se-Young’s room is half-closed, and I push it open quietly to find him sitting up in the chair that’s facing the window. The sound of my footsteps, which I thought I took sneakily, makes his head snap in my direction, and his eyes widen a little before he sends a heart-warming smile my way.

“Yi-Seo,” he signals for me to come closer, and I do so, managing an uneasy smile that has the potential to give away the questions and doubts swimming about within my mind.

“It’s so good to see you in the morning,” he reaches out to hold my hand in his weak hands. “You know, the first person we see in the morning can make our day better or bitter, and I know my day is going to be amazing because I just woke up and saw you,” he laughs softly, and I force out a humorless chuckle because I know for a fact that I’m going to destroy his belief and make his day bitter, even though, right now he believes that it is otherwise.

“I don’t think it is true all the time,” I pause to gauge his reactions that turn from a calm smile to a confused frown, and I drag in a slow breath before I add, “Dr Han.”

The ailing man’s façade twists in bewilderment, his mouth falls agape, all the color from his face vanishes, and he looks completely blindsided as his hand that’s holding mine instantly grows stiff and cold.

“Yi-Seo?” His words sound nothing above a scratchy whisper as I go down on my knees to look him in the eyes.

“Se-Young-ssi,” I say, curling my fingers around his bony hand, “do you want to tell me what happened?” I search his pale eyes for an answer, but I don’t ask for specifics because I know this conversation is going to be hard for him as such, and I don’t want to come across as mean or thoughtless by directing the matter to just finding the missing pieces of the puzzle that I’m trying to solve.

I’ve known Se-Young for a long time now, and the affection that we share runs deeper than what I care to admit. He might have been a bad person in the past, a filthy crook in fact, and he could have even possibly ruined a superstar’s life just like that. But I know that he is regretting his actions, and making him feel guiltier than he already does isn’t my intention at all. He has no one but me, or at least that’s what I have grown to believe over the years, and I would like to continue believing that.

He dips his neck as he visibly struggles to find his composure; his shoulders shudder, and fat drops of hot tears begin to spill out of his eyes. I shuffle a little and hold his hand reassuringly, repeating to myself over and again that breaking down along with him isn’t going to help either of us today.

“That’s my name. Han Woo-Seong,” he confirms, sniffing back his tears as he raises his head to look at me, somehow finding the strength to display a weak smile on his wrinkled face. “I used to be a general physician at the Samsung medical center. I was the one who treated a lot of high-profile patients,” he chuckles lightly, and soon ends up in a coughing fit that makes his face red and forces him to withdraw his hands from mine to frantically take two deep puffs out of his inhaler.

“Are you sure you want to talk now? I think you need some rest,” I help him get up from his chair and move to the bed. Dragging the chair closer to his bed, I sit down on it, facing him.

“I’m okay,” he assures me, nodding. “I lived so well, Yi-Seo. Life was busy; I was always wanted by the hospital management to attend and treat all the celebrity patients, the pay and perks were heavy… I had almost everything I wanted,” he recollects with a kind of proud grin that evaporates in the blink of an eye.

Se-Young remains silent for a while, keeping his gaze reserved only for his hands that are resting on the top of his lap, and I know that he is finding it hard to bring himself to openly talk about whatever it is that he did in the past, that most definitely concerns Taehyung.

I’m so tempted to bring up Taehyung’s name and ask him for exact details, but again, the bond that I share with this man is mutual, and he is running out of time as well. He would most definitely have his own line-up of questions about how I knew his real name, and I have to answer those soon, but I also don’t want him to spend his last days with saltiness among the two of us, so I choose to remain silent to see where this goes.

“I don’t know if you know about this famous idol, Kim Taehyung,” he still doesn’t raise his head to look into my eyes, but completely out of context, my heart races, and my stomach flips when I hear his name, making me swallow thickly. The fact that I had an unexpected encounter with his drunken self this morning rises from the pits of oblivion, and thoughts about him start invading my mind.

“Back in the days, he was extremely popular all over the world, but he isn’t an idol anymore,” he continues spilling, and his tone, though soft, screams remorse and regret.

I remain silent because if I tell him now that I don’t know Taehyung, that would be a direct lie that I wouldn’t be able to cover up for too long. And if I admit to knowing him, then the discussion might branch out into various directions, and I’m not up for it at the moment. So, silence it is, once again.

“And it is because of me,” the confession rolls off his tongue, causing my body to stiffen, and my heart begins to beat wildly.

“I don’t think I quite follow what you’re telling me,” I respond softly, moving to the edge of my seat and chewing the insides of my lips in anticipation of what I might be hearing next.

“I killed my morals to do something that no medical practitioner should ever do. I broke the physician’s pledge and blundered,” Se-Young’s breathing accelerates with every word he says, and it makes me panic if he might suffer another coughing fit.

“Relax, Se-Young-ssi, please. Let’s not talk about it right now,” I try to convince him, but he shakes his head and looks at me for the first time in the span of quite a few minutes.

“I have to let it out, Yi-Seo. I know I’m going to carry the guilt and regret to my grave, but I don’t want to carry a dirty secret with me. Even if it’s only you that gets to know this, I really want to open up about it, right now,” the insistence and firmness of his voice make my shoulders slouch.

Sighing, I lean back in my chair and prepare myself to listen to whatever he has to confess.

“Taehyung didn’t usually visit our hospital for his medical care, but he did one day when he had an accidental slip and fall on the stage. That was on the day of his concert, and the thing is that he had no idea that he would be visiting me that day, but I knew already that he would come to me,” his tone grows grave, and he speaks with a kind of resolute determination blazing in his sunken eyes.

“How did you know it? You just said that he had an accident on stage,” I quiz him, trying my best not to sound too invested.

“A planned accident, Yi-Seo. There were people who wanted to see his fall, literally and figuratively,” the weak man sucks in a sharp breath with raised eyebrows, nodding before he continues, “Taehyung’s fall on stage was planned with precision, in fact, everything that happened that day was planned with perfect timing.”

“Oh,” is the only word that manages to make it past my throat, but the most significant question that bundles up at the back of my throat is ‘who the fuck did that?’

“So, he was brought to me, and I checked him. Everything was as per plan. I expected a back injury or a mild impact on his head, but he had only injured his ankle and bruised his hip a little. He was a young man with very quick reflexes,” he chuckles softly, squeezing my hand a little.

“And then I injected him with a very minimal dose of painkiller that was sure to wear off in an hour or so. I also sent along a canister of painkiller for him to use later if the pain was unbearable, which I was sure he would need. I also knew that he knew how to inject himself into the veins because I was told that he was already doing drugs occasionally,” his frail shoulders lift in a small shrug.

“It isn’t surprising that many celebrities take drugs, but I don’t see how you did anything bad to him. You had only treated his injury,” I carefully work my way around with my words, hoping and praying that he shouldn’t steer the conversation in a different direction and ask me how I knew his real name. Because then it would just abruptly end the progress of this session, probably.

“I did, Yi-Seo. I switched the legal dosage of painkillers with an illegal dosage. Do you know morphine?” He quizzes me, and I nod my head a few times, humming in response. “Yeah, so I claimed to have handed him a regular dosage of morphine, but I sent along a very heavy dosage of morphine with him, which, of course, he had absolutely no clue about,” Se-Young pauses for a breath, picking up a handkerchief to cough into before he folds it and puts it back on the top of his pillow.

I can feel the pieces falling into place, but something major is still missing, and that is his motive for this inhuman and inconsiderate action.

“But why did you do that? Did you have any personal vengeance against him?” I ask him softly, aiming to extract the answers to the most important question clogging my mind.

“I had nothing to do with him, and as I said, he didn’t even visit our hospital until that day. That was, in fact, the first day I met him. But... Everything I did, I was asked to do it or more like coaxed into it.”

“Who coaxed you into it?”

He draws in a deep breath before his ashen eyes lift to look at me. “Sung-Won,” his soft words ring in my ear for a good few seconds before I literally shake my head out of it.

“Sung-Won?” I repeat, raising a brow; my voice comes out in a totally shocked manner, and the man in front of me slowly bobs his head up and down.

“Yeah, he was known as Sammy. He was another artist from the same agency as Taehyung, and he was a regular at our hospital for many years,” Se-Young’s eyes soften, and as he educates me, his expressions turn into a more complex and unfathomable one when he begins to talk about Sammy.

“So, you did it because you knew Sammy for a long time, and because he had some kind of motive to pull down Taehyung?” I tilt my head to one side, and my words come out in a more accusatory tone than intended.

“It wasn’t just because I knew him. I wouldn’t have done it for anyone except him, Yi-Seo. Do you know why?” I answer his question by shaking my head from side to side, simultaneously chewing my lips in a nervous manner.

“I was deeply in love with him,” his head lowers, as does his voice to an almost inaudible level, and the words that I just heard make my face contort in shock, and my jaw hangs slack, rendering my throat dry.

“What?” And as expected, my voice mirrors the shock that my heart and mind experienced a second ago.

“It wasn’t just me. He said that he loved me too and that if I did this for him, it would make him the happiest person. He was very often depressed with his life, and I was so blinded when he told me this plan that would potentially put him at ease, and I was willing to do anything to make him happy. Even if that meant drugging someone,” his sullen eyes glint with regret when they meet mine, but I’m only blinking my eyes at him, unable to phrase my thoughts into appropriate words.

“Well, technically, Taehyung drugged himself, but I was the one who sent that medicine with him. And later that day, Taehyung collapsed while performing on stage after taking the injection, and then a lot happened. He was blacklisted, which was exactly what Sammy wanted, and he was super excited about it as well,” the man in front of me chuckles gingerly, but I can still feel the heaviness in his chest.

“Sammy and I could have had thousands of tomorrows together, but he destroyed what we had. After he got what he needed, he paid me off and asked me to stay incognito for as long as possible because, apparently, I was being hunted for by Taehyung’s staunch supporters who would have even dared to end my life. I trusted him. I abandoned everything I had and came here, hoping that he would take me out of this place, and then we could live happily together. But all I’ve been doing is waiting for him,” he opens his hands in defeat, failing to maintain steady eye contact with me.

My heart feels heavy, and it aches for Se-Young as I take his hand in mine, gently holding it in a supportive manner. “Did he never contact you after you came here?”

“Not even once,” he shakes his head sadly. “And he even told me to destroy every mode of communication that I already had so that I would be untraceable. I changed my identity, my phone number, e-mail, and everything else and came here as a new person. I lost, Yi-Seo. I lost myself while searching for something that I thought I could have,” Se-Young’s tears return once again, and this time, I find it hard to hold back mine.

⚜
Did you see that coming?
🚚

Published on : 02/01/2023