Chapter 2
The parents of ‘Ha Su-yeon’ were fairly good people. To be precise, her ‘mother’ was a good person, while her ‘father’ was absent. In ‘Ha Su-yeon’s’ memories, her father had already been dead for a long time.
Was that why she had gone astray?
Even so, Myeongjeon thought, getting drunk, riding a kick scooter, and dying was no excuse.
“Suyeon… are you all right?”
“Yes.”
On the way out after being discharged, Ms. Lee Hye-in—her ‘mother’—asked that when she saw Myeongjeon walking without any support. Myeongjeon gave her a short answer and walked across the hospital parking lot, then suddenly turned his head.
What he saw was Ms. Lee Hye-in’s face, slightly shrinking back as she asked, “Why?”
‘What on earth had their mother-daughter relationship been like…?’
Myeongjeon scratched the back of his neck. From the day he woke up until now, three days later… this ‘mother’ had come to the hospital every day and tried to talk to him.
It was only natural for her to come every day if her daughter had recovered from a coma, wasn’t it? But it also seemed strange, by Myeongjeon’s standards, for her daughter to recover from a coma while she continued going to work normally, only barely managing to visit during visiting hours before leaving again.
It had been the same during her visits, too.
At first, she had wept her heart out; when he said he could not remember anything, she had made a complicated expression; and later, she had done nothing but watch Myeongjeon’s reaction.
It was the same when she spoke to him. Were you feeling all right? Were you in a bad mood? Trivial things like that. Even when he had nothing to say and replied, “I don’t remember,” remained silent, or merely listened to her, she seemed a little pleased.
Myeongjeon kept digging through ‘Ha Su-yeon’s’ memories, wondering what on earth had happened between them… but he could not find any particularly useful memories.
There was only one thing that could serve as a clue. ‘Ha Su-yeon’ had not liked her mother very much, while her ‘mother’ had continually tried to protect her.
Other than that… in ‘Ha Su-yeon’s’ memories, her ‘mother’ was not a very talkative person. She supported Suyeon without saying much, did everything Suyeon asked for, tried to understand her, and even when Suyeon caused trouble, ultimately tried to keep believing in her to the very end. (Of course, ‘Ha Su-yeon’ did not seem to see it that way, but that was how it looked to Myeongjeon, at least.)
‘Good grief…’
After stealing a sidelong glance at Ms. Lee Hye-in, who kept sneaking looks at him, Myeongjeon sighed inwardly. What on earth was this farce?
To ‘Ha Su-yeon,’ Ms. Lee Hye-in may have been her mother and an adult, but from Myeongjeon’s perspective, she was simply a young woman. And maintaining her sanity while losing her husband and watching her child go astray was certainly something worth praising.
Of course, the person who might have recognized all that effort had already died.
“I’m having a little trouble.”
With those thoughts in mind, Myeongjeon opened his mouth.
“… Huh? Oh? Uh, right! Mom will help you!”
After looking at him for a moment with an expression that seemed to ask whether she had heard correctly, ‘Mom’ brightened and moved to support Myeongjeon.
‘Do I really have to go this far…?’
Thinking there would probably be a lot to do from here on, Myeongjeon sighed inwardly once more.
* * *
The house was decent. An apartment of about 24 pyeong, with two bedrooms, a living room, a dressing room, a kitchen, a balcony, and so on.
No, compared with his old two-room place, it was quite nice. A refrigerator, washing machine, dryer… machines whose purposes he could not identify, a water purifier, and all sorts of other things. It had everything a home needed.
His two-room place had been so crammed with instruments, amplifiers, and equipment that there was barely room to set foot inside. Even though he used the main bedroom as a storage room, the equipment had spilled into the living room.
‘Come to think of it, what happened to all that equipment…?’
To strangers, everything in that house would have looked like junk, but if all those items had been sold at their proper value… they would probably have fetched tens of millions of won. A Dumble amp (Reference 1) alone was worth more than fifty million won.
But then again, there was a good chance all those things had ended up at a scrap yard.
His acquaintances had never offered to take care of his belongings, and probably did not even know where his house was… while his landlady was the sort of old woman who would know nothing about such things in the first place.
‘I wonder if the guitars are still there.’
Thinking he should visit the place where he had lived when he got the time, he opened the room marked [NO ENTRY].
“… This is a bit…”
“Huh?? Suyeon, what’s wrong?”
Without entering the room, Myeongjeon stood there aghast, and Ms. Lee Hye-in cautiously poked her head out from behind him to look inside.
The room that came into view was… an absolute disaster.
Snack crumbs were scattered across the floor, the wardrobe was unusable, cosmetics, a hairbrush, and all sorts of other things were strewn across the desk, and the bed was filled with objects whose purposes were impossible to identify everywhere except the space where one could lie down.
“Suyeon…”
After seeing the state of the room, ‘Mom’ stared fixedly at Myeongjeon.
‘No, it wasn’t me who made this mess, so what do you expect me to do just because you look at me like that?’
He had often heard that women made a mess of their rooms. But the rooms of the women he had visited… Well, perhaps they had been tidied in advance for sexual relations with a man, but he did not remember any of them being this bad.
“Did I do this?”
“… Yes, it seems so.”
At that answer, Myeongjeon let out a deep sigh, rummaged around the kitchen, and found some trash bags. First, let’s throw out everything that can be thrown out. With every window covered by blinds and the room left in a complete mess, was it any wonder a person went off the rails?
People were meant to live in the light. They should bask in bright sunlight, keep their distance from things like computers and cell phones, go outside to play, kick a ball around, hike, and take walks. That was how a person became a proper human being…
Myeongjeon could not understand what on earth was wrong with kids these days. Kids nowadays just stayed inside, fiddled around with their phones, and kept their distance from books.
They spent all their time staring at things called SNS—Instagram or TikTok or whatever—and ruined their own lives. They had no intention of reading proper books, preferring picture books and animated movies by those Jap bastards, or whatever strange things they called fantasy novels and web novels.
That was why the world had ended up in this state, and why this girl had died riding a kick scooter.
It truly was the end times.
* * *
After showering, Myeongjeon looked at the water-streaked mirror and thought…
‘Is this my new body?’
He had seen himself in the mirror while going in and out of the bathroom at the hospital, but this was the first time he had closely observed his entire body.
Hair falling to her shoulders, with her forehead exposed. Well-proportioned shoulders and breasts, a well-maintained body, and wide hips. Skin without a single blemish. A model-like physique, one might say… A feminine body with perfect balance, not a single part of it out of place.
Myeongjeon clenched his fist and turned it this way and that. His moderately long fingers curled up, forming a fist of a size completely different from the one he had possessed before.
He found that fact somehow displeasing.
‘My hands are too small, and my fingers are too thick.’
There are no particular physical requirements for becoming a guitarist. Of course, you need hands, but somewhere in the world there may be someone who plays the guitar with their feet because they have no hands, so you could say that even hands are not absolutely necessary for playing guitar.
But some physical traits are advantageous. The thinner the fingers and the larger the hands, the better. Jimi Hendrix, Paul Gilbert, Steve Vai, and so on… The larger your hands, the wider your range of motion, so it was certainly advantageous to have big hands in one way or another.
Still, it was not only guitarists with large hands who played guitar well. Jimmy Page, Eric Clapton, B.B. King, Stevie Ray Vaughan, David Gilmour… Most of them had ordinary-sized hands.
From that perspective, the real problem was these smooth, slender forearms. Many people said it was unimportant, but grip strength was nevertheless a fairly significant factor when playing guitar. The stronger your grip, the more delicate your control could be.
But this arm looked as though it had no grip strength to speak of. His former self had possessed enough strength to split an apple with ease, whether using both hands or just one.
‘Could I even open a single plastic bottle properly now…?’
He roughly swept back and tied up the hair that reached past his shoulders, put on a white T-shirt and microfiber pants, then sat at the desk and picked up a notebook.
A notebook whose pages were blank white no matter where he opened it.
This girl’s grades had seemed decent. How on earth had she studied? Shaking the pointless thoughts from his head, Myeongjeon scribbled with a pen.
[Assessing the Current Situation]
The most important task, in Myeongjeon’s opinion. It was something he had been unable to do during his three days in the hospital because he had either been drugged up or digging through incomplete memories.
‘I have a rough idea of what kind of life this girl lived… but that alone isn’t enough.’
Human memory was imperfect, and people generally remembered only what reflected well on them, distorting it in a direction favorable to themselves.
Therefore, he needed witnesses and evidence. Her ‘mother’ and ‘friends,’ KakaoTalk messages, SNS, and all the rest. He had to gather as much information as possible and use it to determine clearly what kind of person ‘Ha Su-yeon’ actually was.
[Plan Going Forward]
And using that information, he had to decide how to proceed from here on.
He had already decided how he would live.
Not repeating his former life.
But then, how could he avoid repeating his former life?
‘Seo Myeongjeon’ had already failed, so should he live ‘Ha Su-yeon’s’ life? Based on the memories in this body and other information, should he gather up the things this girl had done, said, and wanted to do… and recreate Ha Su-yeon as she was?
Or, if not… what kind of life should he live?
In that stifling situation, a song began to spill from Myeongjeon’s lips before he knew it. Well, what should he do?
For some reason, Myeongjeon felt as though a drum fill were coming in. He was in a room where not a sound could be heard, yet it felt as if music were striking directly into his ears…
A feeling he had never experienced before.
Following that feeling, he suddenly wanted to play guitar along with the rhythm in his head.
It was something he had never done before.
Because, for the Myeongjeon of the past, there had been nothing but ‘practice’ or ‘performance.’
He sprang to his feet and slung an imaginary guitar over his shoulder. His left hand formed chords, and his right hand gripped a pick. The body would roughly be here, and the neck would probably extend about this far.
Myeongjeon closed his eyes as he plucked at the strings with an imaginary pick. He recalled the time in his childhood when he thought he played guitar better than anyone else in the world. A time when he enjoyed music purely, without jealousy, an inferiority complex, self-reproach, or regret.
The live house of that era.
A leaking ceiling under a steady drizzle. Two or three blue plastic basins sat beneath it, while the rest had already been overturned, water spread across the floor by drunken patrons.
Someone clapped and sang along to his song, someone was already nodding off, and someone sat watching with folded arms, as if evaluating the song.
Following that memory, Myeongjeon played the guitar he had played back then and sang. As he reached the climax and brought it neatly to its final note, he needlessly raised it another octave to show off.
And now, the guitar solo.
Imagining a bluesy tone, he began wildly playing air guitar.
“Suyeon, dinner’s rea… huh…?”
His eyes met Ms. Lee Hye-in’s as she opened the door.
And then, the door closed.
… Shouldn’t I at least be given a chance to explain?