Chapter 121: Night Self-Study (3)

Dragged along by Geon-su, Su-myeon crouched tightly beneath the stairs and held his breath.

The rest of the group, who had crawled under the stairs after him, did the same.

Wendy, her grotesquely twisted body still unchanged, stopped directly above the staircase with a creaking sound.

“.......”

The sight of six tense male students crouched together and huddled beneath the stairs was hardly a pleasant one.

Just suffocatingly close by, Wendy paced around as though she had sensed something.

'Could she have noticed us?'

Just before that thought completely took over his mind.

Wendy finally seemed to give up and dragged her heavy body away somewhere else.

The clicking of Wendy’s bent joints sounded almost like high heels, sending chills down his spine.

Click-

Click-

And by the time the gradually receding sound could no longer be heard at all.

Everyone let out a sigh of relief at the same time.

Then.

“......Could you let go of me?”

Was that... Du-pal?

The handsome student whose identity still seemed somewhat doubtful muttered irritably.

While Wendy had been pacing around above the stairs, Su-myeon and Ha-min had each been gripping Geon-su.

Han-su and Young-cheol had been holding onto the student who was probably Du-pal....

They were clutching the two of them so tightly from either side that it was almost as though they were being arrested.

But before letting him go, Su-myeon had a question.

“No, before that. You really are Manager Park, right?”

It felt absurd to ask a handsome young man who barely looked eighteen whether he was actually that potbellied middle-aged man.

But when Su-myeon cautiously asked, the handsome student clicked his tongue.

“......Ah, come on. You already recognized me, so why are you asking again?”

That gruff, middle-aged-man way of speaking definitely belonged to Du-pal.

It did, but.......

“......You used to be this handsome? Then why do you look like that now?”

In the end, Ha-min could not hold back and said it outright.

It might have seemed like a strangely inappropriate conversation when they had only just managed to run into one another.

But his appearance was shocking enough that it could not be helped.

Come to think of it, Geon-su also had a rather handsome face despite looking sickly.

But even trying to make sense of it that way did not make this easy to accept.

“I’m getting cognitive dissonance.”

Even Han-su went so far as to say that.

There was probably no need to explain any further just how drastic the difference was.

“You really must’ve been through a lot emotionally.”

Young-cheol said, looking at Du-pal with pity and sympathy.

Back when he had been unable to even recognize the absence of his wife and son.

Had that emptiness caused him to let himself deteriorate that badly?

Everyone had been angry with Du-pal in their own way for entering the ghost story on his own and refusing to answer their messages.

But now that they were actually looking at him.

All of them lost the will to be angry.

Just how bad must things have been for him to end up like that....

“What the hell are you all talking about.... Hey, what’s wrong with the way I look?!”

Du-pal himself seemed dumbfounded and exasperated by their reactions.

But even that expression was handsome.

Seriously, how had someone this good-looking ended up like that....

Watching Su-myeon’s group look at Du-pal with increasingly sympathetic eyes, Geon-su let out a short sigh.

“For now, how about we get somewhere safe?”

***

In the end, the six teenagers once again gathered closely together inside the library.

Du-pal was receiving comparatively the most attention.

“I mean, why’d you come all the way here? If things hadn’t gotten this bad, I wasn’t even going to say anyth—”

“I don’t think you’re in a position to be saying that right now, Manager Park.”

Su-myeon cut Du-pal off flatly.

Feeling sorry for how mercilessly the years had beaten down his appearance was one thing.

But that did not change the fact that he was the person responsible for making this entire situation so complicated.

“You still have no intention of leaving?”

Meanwhile, Ha-min asked Geon-su.

At the question, Geon-su nodded with a firm expression.

“Yeah. I’m not leaving. Sorry, but you came all this way for nothing.”

Geon-su’s mind still had not changed.

And he was clear about it.

“If anything, this worked out well. It got a little lonely after you guys left, but I don’t regret it. And now I even have Dad here. This place is a little scary, but I’ve gotten used to it in my own way. I don’t have any reason to leave anymore.”

“What if your illness could be cured?”

Geon-su’s unwavering gaze shook at Su-myeon’s words.

Young-cheol immediately picked up from there.

“Nice to meet you, Geon-su. I’m....”

Young-cheol had also been turned into someone around their age, but fortunately, he had always looked somewhat older than his age.

His face could pass for someone in his mid-twenties, which gave him a little more credibility.

“Anyway, I’m currently a surgeon, and I used to work as a professor at a university hospital.”

Young-cheol continued cautiously.

“I’ve performed heart surgery many times before. So....”

“You think I’ve never had surgery before? I’ve had procedures done by every famous doctor there is! Me too!”

Geon-su cut Young-cheol off and shouted.

For someone as quiet and composed as Geon-su, the congenital illness that had tormented him his entire life was a curse.

There was practically nothing he had not tried, and at one point he had even believed he might be cured.

But as he gradually grew older, only his despair and suffering had increased.

“What do you even know, butting in like this when nobody asked you to? I like it here! I said I like it here!”

Geon-su had been happier recently than he had ever been.

Even when he had been alone, he had preferred this nightmare inside a ghost story where he did not have to be sick.

But once his father joined him, it had become a fairly decent place to live.

They had even played catch, that quintessential father-and-son dream, and now the two of them could play basketball together too.

Of course, they had to do it while secretly avoiding Wendy and the monsters.

But lately, even the thrill of avoiding them had become something like a game for father and son.

“So why do you keep showing up and bothering me? Are you planning to take Dad away from me again now? If that’s what you’re trying to do, then I’ll...!”

SMACK-

As Geon-su grew increasingly emotional, Ha-min suddenly slapped him hard across the face.

Du-pal flinched, but Han-su held him back.

Those two really were the same age, so perhaps there were things only they could get through to each other about.

“What the...!”

“You looked like you were about to say something you’d regret, so I stopped you.”

At Ha-min’s words, Geon-su clamped his mouth shut.

Even he belatedly realized that he had gotten too worked up.

As his ragged breathing gradually settled, Geon-su’s shoulders, which had been raised high with tension, sagged weakly.

“Hey, Park Geon-su. Listen carefully to what I’m saying.”

Ha-min’s voice was every bit as firm as Geon-su’s had been.

For now, the adults decided to stay out of the conversation between the actual teenagers.

With the adults falling silent, Ha-min continued speaking to Geon-su.

“Yeah, we don’t really know what it’s like for you. But there’s one thing we can know for sure. Living happily here forever, just you and your dad? That’s impossible. Sure, it might be nice right now. But do you really think you can spend decades here alone with your dad?”

Because a father was not a friend.

How happy could someone truly be forever within the boundaries of guardian and dependent?

“What we need are friends. Not our dads, really.”

What was the most important kind of relationship for an eighteen-year-old?

Of course, parents still occupied an important place in their lives, but teenagers around that age naturally prioritized plans with their friends over plans with their parents.

Because it was the age when they had to gradually prepare for independence.

At Ha-min’s words, Geon-su pressed his lips tightly together.

In truth, part of the reason he was enjoying his time with Du-pal so much right now was that Du-pal’s appearance made him look almost the same age.

Geon-su himself was aware of that fact as well.

“And about this surgery. We’re not saying you have to go back to reality to get it done. We’re saying we should try doing it here.”

“......What? What do you mean...?”

Geon-su frowned, but then his expression suddenly changed as though he had realized something.

Geon-su himself had been the one who stitched Park I-an’s torn-open abdomen back together.

“Park I-an is back outside now. He healed completely, and he’s playing baseball again. Do you understand what that means?”

There was no way he could not.

Geon-su had been the one who stitched that flesh together.

“We’ll do the same thing to you. We’ll replace your sick heart with the Tin Woodman’s Heart Su-myeon has, then stitch you back up with shadow thread.”

At Ha-min’s words, Geon-su’s eyes trembled with confusion.

“Park I-an, the guy you stitched up back then, is perfectly fine and playing baseball now. So imagine how well it’ll go if this guy, who’s actually a doctor, does it.”

At Ha-min’s words, Geon-su’s wavering gaze shifted toward Young-cheol.

“Well, the way you stitched up Park I-an’s abdomen was actually pretty impressive. Though I do think I’ll be a little better at it.”

Young-cheol added that with an awkward smile.

Ha-min’s persuasion was clearly working.

Although Du-pal seemed a little hurt that the key phrase turned out to be the unexpected, What you need isn’t a parent, but a friend.

Still.

As long as they all left together in the end, that was what mattered.

“Give me the rooftop key.”

Taking advantage of the moment, Su-myeon quietly whispered to Du-pal.

“Ah, right.”

Du-pal flinched, then hurriedly found the rooftop key he had been carrying and returned it to Su-myeon.

Seeing the awkward, guilty expression of a man who clearly had no idea how to put what he wanted to say into words, Su-myeon gave a small laugh and firmly squeezed his shoulder once.

In any case, Du-pal had not acted out of malice.

And Geon-su’s situation had always remained on Su-myeon’s mind as well.

If they could somehow resolve everything properly.

Then perhaps they could simply call it a case of all’s well that ends well.

“Then... how would the surgery work?”

Geon-su, apparently somewhat persuaded now, began asking for details.

Young-cheol explained the procedure in enough detail to reassure him.

About half of it was packed with medical terminology, so most of the group could not understand much of what he said.

But Geon-su, who had suffered from heart disease all his life and had undergone surgery before, and Du-pal, who had been his guardian, seemed to understand most of it.

“So you’re saying that fake heart would actually beat in reality too? How could something like that.......”

“Hey, you see Su-myeon’s eye over there, right?”

Speaking as though trying to match Geon-su’s eye level, Young-cheol gestured toward Su-myeon while using an embarrassingly childish form of address.

As though he had expected this, Su-myeon brushed his bangs aside and showed Geon-su his left eye.

A gray lens resting over a white eyeball with no visible pupil.

Geon-su flinched at the sight, and Young-cheol continued.

“It might look like that, but he can see perfectly well through it even in reality. So, basically, a ghost-story item that becomes integrated into your body inside a ghost story continues to perform its function properly in reality.”

Of course, there was no medical explanation for it.

An unreal phenomenon encountered the causality of a human being and was reborn as a supernatural phenomenon.

At Young-cheol’s explanation, Su-myeon added casually, as though it were no big deal.

“Well, thanks to it, this eye can actually see without glasses now. It doesn’t look great, though.”

Hearing that functionally it had actually become better than before, Geon-su’s expression slowly began to change.

What appeared on the face of the boy who had seemed to have given up on everything.

Was hope.

“Then... then.... You really mean.......”

“Yeah. We’ll do the surgery here, and then we’ll all leave together.”

Ha-min held out his hand to Geon-su as though offering a handshake.

“And come to our school. I promise I’ll be your friend.”

Watching the two boys, Du-pal lowered his head with a choked, emotional gasp.

Sadly, Ha-min was right.

At that age, children no longer needed only guardians.

They needed friends.

“All right, then. Shall we get ready for the surgery?”