Chapter 67 – The Price of Misjudgment
Yoon Ki-hyun straightened his posture as he arrived before the funeral portrait, which was buried amidst a dense thicket of flowers. The woman smiling in the photo had the corners of her mouth shaped strangely like Jeong Si-jun’s.
Following the example of the mourners who had arrived before him, Yoon Ki-hyun placed his share of chrysanthemums and stood facing Jeong Si-jun’s father, who stood as the chief mourner.
“Thank you for coming. You are the one who became Jun’s Guide, correct?”
A low voice, not unlike Jeong Si-jun’s, resonated through the air.
“……Yes. It is a pleasure to meet you.”
“I have heard much about you. Please, have some food before you leave.”
“I will.”
Looking exhausted, the man turned his head to greet other mourners. Jeong Si-jun immediately escorted Yoon Ki-hyun as if it were second nature. It seemed he had grown accustomed to it after greeting so many guests.
“Are you going to eat?”
“Yes. Team Leader, did you eat anything?”
Jeong Si-jun searched his memory and gave a small shake of his head. Since yesterday evening, even drinking water often resulted in vomiting. It was as if his entire body was rejecting it; even swallowing a single sip of water was difficult.
“If you’re okay with it, let’s eat a little something together.”
“……Alright. Then.”
Jeong Si-jun placed the food brought by the staff in front of Yoon Ki-hyun first before belatedly picking up his spoon.
He tried chewing a small mouthful of rice, but the food felt foreign in his mouth. It was dry, like chewing pebbles, and when he forced himself to swallow, his throat burned as if he were swallowing a lump of hot lava.
Though he wanted to immediately heave up everything refluxing from a stomach that rejected food, Jeong Si-jun silently kept his place until Yoon Ki-hyun finished his meal, mechanically pushing food into his mouth.
Even during the quiet meal, the large funeral hall remained crowded with the arrival of mourners.
The space, filled with men and women in black suits, seemed entirely dedicated to deeply mourning the death of one person.
It was a send-off that Yoon Ki-hyun had been unable to provide for his own father. Looking at the mourners and the [unauthorized copy]condolence wreaths filling the hall, which looked to be at least a hundred square meters, Yoon Ki-hyun realized a simple fact anew.
The saying that while humans cannot all be equal, they are equal in the face of death, was wrong. Naturally, there was a hierarchy even in death.
Yoon Ki-hyun silently chewed and swallowed his troubled heart along with the food in his mouth.
This place was a space solely for honoring Jeong Si-jun’s mother. It was not a place to dwell on self-pity, gripped by filthy feelings of inferiority.
As they neared the end of the meal, unable to focus due to their differing thoughts, Jeong Si-jun asked for the table to be cleared and led Yoon Ki-hyun outside. He, too, needed time to breathe.
Passing the smoking area, the two settled in a secluded spot with a bench and remained silent for a while.
“…….”
“…….”
When he stole a glance sideways, Jeong Si-jun’s eyes were brimming with sorrow. Seeing him try to accept it with a composure that was calmer than expected made Yoon Ki-hyun’s heart ache. He carefully and slowly stroked the back of Jeong Si-jun’s hand.
“I’ll be going now. I’m sorry for coming on my own even though you told me not to.”
Jeong Si-jun’s firmly closed lips remained shut. style="opacity:0;font-size:0;">unauthorized copyAs he offered a low apology, Yoon Ki-hyun felt the texture of the envelope tucked inside his jacket.
Despite containing a heavy amount of cash, the weight felt even more wretched because he couldn’t bring himself to hand it over, pressing down on his breath.
He had once tried to die because he had no money for immediate treatment, and he might have to face that again, but the reason he had prepared the condolence money was not grand.
The reason he had come all this way despite the warning not to, and the reason he couldn’t leave Jeong Si-jun’s side at this moment, stroking the finely trembling back of his hand several times.
“……I was just worried about you, Team Leader.”
Even though he was in no position to be worried about by anyone, he worried for Jeong Si-jun. Ridiculously so.
Jeong Si-jun’s scarred hand grasped Yoon Ki-hyun’s pale hand in return. Holding the hand gently so as not to cause pain, Jeong Si-jun let out a slow breath and finally managed to squeeze out a single sentence.
“I’ll see you next week.”
That was all he had to say. The words Jeong Si-jun wanted were simply to see each other in their ordinary daily lives.
Everyone has certain attitudes or words they hope to hear from another. For Jeong Si-jun, it meant that cliché comforts like “stay strong” or “time heals all wounds” were not what he needed.
“Alright. Next week…….”
“…….”
“Let’s meet in the guiding room.”
“……Yeah.”
A voice, whether a sob or a groan, brushed past like it was scratching his throat. Yoon Ki-hyun did not avoid the tearful gaze looking at him and silently reached out.
The moment their chests touched, Jeong Si-jun collapsed slowly onto Yoon Ki-hyun’s shoulder as if he had lost gravity. Curling his large upper body, he clung to the smaller frame and swallowed his sobs.
“……Actually, I thought you’d be able to hold on well this time too.”
Sorrow and pain, which Yoon Ki-hyun had never imagined he would hear from Jeong Si-jun, flowed out weakly. Yoon Ki-hyun wrapped his arms around the sturdy back of the man sobbing helplessly in his embrace.
Jeong Si-jun’s wavelength was still a mess. But what he needed right now was not guiding.
He didn’t want to say that she would have gone to a better place, or that his mother would be sad if he cried like this, or to tell him to cry as much as he wanted.
An afternoon where the air was still cold despite the sun being up. In a corner of the funeral [unauthorized copy]hall filled with the scent of someone’s cigarette drifting from afar, Yoon Ki-hyun silently held Jeong Si-jun. Hoping that his sorrow would fade, even if only a little.
It had been a long time since he’d slept in. Yoon Ki-hyun barely opened his eyes in the morning, well past his usual commute time.
His mind was noisy from the start. Having visited the funeral hall yesterday, the scenes drifting through his head were all unsettling.
The endless wave of condolence wreaths, the hall crowded with mourners, the wide dining area where meals were prepared for the guests. Even Jeong Si-jun, weeping sorrowfully on a secluded bench outside the funeral hall.
“Haa…….”
His heart was restless. In truth, when he first arrived at the funeral hall, he had felt only a strange emotion.
This was because the procession of mourning was so vastly different compared to his own father’s funeral, which had barely met the basic requirements. From the numerous mourners and endless wreaths to the luxurious-looking dining hall, there wasn’t a single thing that didn’t differ.
However, the moment Jeong Si-jun leaned against a product and wept sorrowfully, Yoon Ki-hyun became ashamed of all the thoughts he had harbored.
The tears of Jeong Si-jun that dampened his shoulder were excessively heavy. The weight soaking into his shoulder made him feel as if he were being scolded. That was the sorrow of someone who always expressed their emotions fully without hiding them.
Since there was no Jeong Si-jun to guide at the Center, there was no reason to go to work. The unexpected gap in his schedule was awkward, but he couldn’t skip a meal.
The message from Jeong Si-jun arrived the day after the burial.
[Jeong Si-jun: Thank you for coming that day. I sent her off well. See you next Monday.]
It was the contact he had been waiting for, but replying wasn’t easy. After deleting and rewriting the message several times, he completed a reply that was utterly pathetic considering how long he had hesitated.
He figured that rather than offering clumsy comfort, it would be better to at least fulfill his responsibility as a Guide.
[Is your wavelength okay?]
He didn’t know what Jeong Si-jun would think upon receiving this message. However, Yoon Ki-hyun hoped he was okay. Whether it was his wavelength or his heart.
[Jeong Si-jun: Better than I thought.]
Perhaps it wasn’t a situation where guiding was necessary. Yoon Ki-hyun wrote and deleted a few more words before sending a plain reply. It was a dry response, so business-like that he wondered if he was even human.
[Understood. Please contact me if anything happens over the weekend. See you at the Center on Monday.]
By “anything,” he meant guiding. Since his role was to provide guiding whenever it was needed.
However, Jeong Si-jun might not contact him over the weekend. stolen [Read on Read BL Novels]contentThough he was a reckless fellow, he was ghost-like in his ability to never be the first to reach out when someone was waiting for his contact.
[Jeong Si-jun: Alright. You rest well too, Ki-hyun. Go to the hospital if you’re sick.]
The hospital. Looking at the message, Yoon Ki-hyun belatedly remembered Jeong Si-jun’s donation. The idea of donating money to a hospital for the convenience of medical treatment was still surprising.
He had heard the guidance from the development fund staff before being discharged, but it hadn’t really sunk in yet. They said there was a separate donor’s waiting room and that they provided various small conveniences, but he wasn’t sure. Since he hadn’t experienced it personally, it remained vague.
‘I really do live in a world where money can buy everything.’
It was a realm of thinking that was difficult to imitate. If only his father hadn’t appeared—no, if he could have ignored his father, would something have been different?
Yoon Ki-hyun pondered for a moment and then shook his head.
‘Where would a pushover like me even go?’
No matter how many times he thought about it, he couldn’t abandon his father. As expected, his damn affection deficiency was the problem. Which was only natural.
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