By Zephyria “You can’t remember your name?”
“It’s not that I can’t remember…”
“It’s okay, Hyean-ssi. Your memory can be temporarily unstable. It’s something that can happen. For now, there are no particular signs, so it’s likely a temporary phenomenon. We’ll conduct detailed tests starting tomorrow, so for today, just focus on keeping your body and mind relaxed. Okay?”
It’s not that I can’t remember.
Rather, I remember everything in detail.
This time too, Choi Hong-seo felt the misaligned gap. The gap, through which only a thin sliver of external light seeped, was widening with a creaking sound.
Because of this, he was afraid to confirm it clearly. He felt like he had to look away. It wasn’t a thought, but a premonition.
The two noisy people burst in right after the doctor and nurse left the room.
“Hyean-ah, you son of a bitch! I knew you’d wake up! I knew someone as stubborn as you would come back to life even after dying!”
A middle-aged man with short, graying hair that was starting to fall out, pushed the door open as if kicking it down, and entered. Despite his rough tone, his eyes were glistening with tears, and he was a face Choi Hong-seo couldn’t recall no matter how hard he tried. The burly young man who followed him and stood at his feet was equally unfamiliar.
“Hyung, you must have gone through a lot. I knew you would wake up.”
The young man standing at his feet, with reddened eyes, called him Hyung, but his face looked at least three or four years older than Choi Hong-seo.
The two, dressed in suits that didn’t quite suit their build or demeanor, looked like a gangster duo of senior and junior at first glance. But they didn’t seem like gangsters, as their attire and hairstyles weren’t particularly indicative of that profession. He had dealt with such clients in his host bar days and knew their characteristics well.
“Excuse me, but… what is our…”
“……”
“……”
At Choi Hong-seo’s question, the faces of the two men stiffened. It was the same reaction as the doctor’s a moment ago. They had a frightened look, bewildered as to whether the awakened patient’s brain might be impaired.
The middle-aged man was the first to bend down, thrusting his round, large face in front of Choi Hong-seo.
“Here, look at my face carefully. ENA CEO Lim Sang-jin! I’m Lim Sang-jin, who worked with you for 10 years! This is Yong-jae. Goo Yong-jae. Your manager. Tiffany is also being taken care of by Yong-jae, you punk!”
ENA… ENA… Choi Hong-seo, with his eyes narrowed, found a clue and quickly searched his memory. ENA, it was a word that remained in his memory.
“ENA… isn’t that the company ‘Titan’ belonged to?”
“That’s right, ‘Titan’! You remember! Hey, you punk, you scared me for a second!”
The middle-aged man let out a sigh of relief and took a handkerchief from his jacket pocket to wipe the sweat from his forehead. However, the gap between the man’s words and Hong-seo’s memory was not bridged at all.
He remembered the company ENA Entertainment and the idol group ‘Titan.’ But Choi Hong-seo himself had no connection to that company or group. At least, not with his current memories.
Or, was CEO Myeong of UB Entertainment, where I belonged, and CEO Lim of ENA close? I never heard anything like that…
CEO Myeong. CEO Myeong. The name brought a grimace to Choi Hong-seo’s brow and lips.
Right, what happened to CEO Myeong? If the X-Boy Scandal had truly exploded, that guy wouldn’t have gotten away this time either.
As his blood pressure rose with anger and hatred, a headache immediately followed. Choi Hong-seo winced at the needle-like pain in his temples.
“What would you have done if you hadn’t woken up, you idiot? You were trying to scare Chairman Jo, weren’t you? You fool, do you think Chairman Jo would bat an eye at this? That punk, he didn’t contact you once during the months you were lying here, not even a peep…!”
“Sir, please stop for today.”
“Huh?”
“The doctor said that absolute rest is the priority today, didn’t he?”
The young man, Yong-jae, stepped in to stop the ENA CEO, who was rambling on about things Choi Hong-seo couldn’t comprehend, his face flushed with excitement.
“Yes, yes. It’s enough that you’ll live well from now on. The important thing is that you woke up, isn’t it?”
Of course, Choi Hong-seo couldn’t understand a word of their conversation.
“What about Mom? My mother… or my other family members? Do they not know? Or, what about the people from our company… what happened to UB?”
“……”
CEO Lim’s face turned ashen once more. He kept his eyes fixed on Choi Hong-seo, fumbling for the large man’s arm.
“Yong-jae, what’s wrong with him? Is there something wrong with his head? Huh? Should we call a doctor?”
The young giant, Yong-jae, pushed the CEO aside and approached Choi Hong-seo.
“Hyung. The doctor said absolute rest is crucial today. Don’t think about anything else. We can solve things one by one, slowly, from now on. Understood?”
What they were saying seemed right. He didn’t know why these strangers were acting so familiar, but for now, he felt he needed to figure out the situation himself rather than asking them questions. Now that he knew this was reality, there were too many facts he needed to confirm.
The X-Boy Scandal, CEO Myeong of UB Entertainment, and… the person he was most curious about.
“What about my phone or my belongings?”
“When you were found, you didn’t have your phone, wallet, or anything, you punk. You were barely wearing clothes. Yong-jae brought the second phone from the officetel here.”
CEO Lim of ENA opened a drawer next to the bed and rummaged through it.
“Yong-jae kept it charged so it wouldn’t run out of power. He knew you’d look for your phone first when you woke up.”
“……”
“But you really are looking for your phone first, you rascal.”
CEO Lim chuckled hollowly and handed over the phone. However, what CEO Lim placed in his hand was not the model Choi Hong-seo used, not the ARA Electronics phone that ‘he,’ Lee Hae-sung, had gifted him.
Choi Hong-seo couldn’t understand anything the two men were saying. He moved his dry lips, forcing out a voice.
“Thank you. I… want to rest.”
“Yes, yes. The doctor said you’d be tired just from breathing right now. Sleep well and recover. I’ll come again tomorrow.”
“……”
“It’s just ironic, isn’t it? It just so happened that today was the day I was considering whether to put your officetel on the market…”
CEO Lim, with a complicated expression, left the hospital room with Yong-jae.
The appearance and departure of the two strangers felt like a ridiculous play unfolding before his eyes. A play seen from the middle, without any information, having missed the first 20 minutes.
Choi Hong-seo thought.
Was his memory temporarily unstable after the ‘incident,’ as the doctor suggested? Would he remember the names and faces of those people tomorrow, or the day after?
No, the doctor’s guess was wrong. I’m not forgetting my name. I don’t have amnesia.
The problem was that their memories and my memory were different.
His body felt heavy, as if he’d been thoroughly beaten, but it wasn’t a situation where he could comfortably fall asleep. He had to confirm what that gap, that misalignment, was.
The phone’s lock was easily released with Choi Hong-seo’s fingerprint. Everything, from the wallpaper to the app layout, was different from his own phone. But he didn’t have time to dwell on such things.
First, Choi Hong-seo opened the internet and typed his own name into the search bar. His own name, which he had obsessively searched dozens, no, sometimes over a hundred times a day.
Articles, posts on various communities, personal blogs, mentions on social media—he had to scan all accessible information to feel at ease. He couldn’t stop himself, even though he knew it was self-harm, like cutting his own flesh.
Choi… Hong… Seo…
“……”
Even though he had typed his short, three-character name, he couldn’t bring himself to execute the search. Choi Hong-seo stared at the blinking cursor behind his name for a long time, then deleted all the letters. And he began to input another name.
Lee… Hae… Sung.
His fingers tapping the screen trembled, and his heart rate quickened.
His throat, swallowing dryly, felt like it was swallowing a burning coal. The short time it took for the results to load felt cruelly long, and he bit his dry, chapped lower lip. He felt a fear that perhaps all traces of the Lee Hae-sung he knew had vanished from this world.
Fortunately, that didn’t happen.
At the very top of the page was his official profile registered on a portal site. It was the same familiar profile he had seen countless times.
Lee Hae-sung. Businessman.
Affiliation: ARA Electronics, Wireless Business Division, Vice President.
Family: Father Lee Woo-hyuk, Mother Yoo Ha-young, Grandfather Lee Kang-moon, Younger sibling Lee Do-yeon, Younger sibling Lee Ju-seong.
Education: Completed Doctoral Program in Business Administration, Stanford University Graduate School of Business.
Next to the profile, which only listed basic information, a small photo was attached.
It was the same photo he had seen the first time he searched his name in his room.
He had once complained about that photo. He said it looked like a salaryman going to work in Yeouido and wasn’t great. He said it couldn’t be helped because the PR department chose it, but he didn’t like it. He had said it with a slight blush, like a boy embarrassed at having a secret revealed.