High on You (Choi Do Il x Oh In Joo - Little Women 작은 아씨들)

16

22 DAYS UNTIL THE GRAND GALA BALL

That morning, Choi Do-il requested a rented car for the following five months and drove his mother to the hospital that had been appointed by her Greek doctors as the new facility where she was supposed to get her cancer treatment. The traffic inside the heart of Seoul was crazy, and they arrived at the cancer center with a 20-minute delay.
"Everything alright so far?" Do-il knew how tiring car rides were for her mother. Car rides as well as any other movement, for that mattered.
"Yes, I'm fine. It might be the change of scenery or the air quality, but I feel better since we've arrived." Of course, the man knew So-young was just kidding about the air quality part, but the important thing was for his mom to be comfortable and okay generally speaking.
"Do you think they'll be up to it?" she asked her son.
"The doctors spoke to them directly, and they gave them strict protocols to follow. They have to be up to their standards, otherwise they might lose face value." Do-il was just speaking facts. The experimental cures had arrived directly from a similar case study in the US, and when he'd convinced his mother to apply to an experimental program, given how critical she'd been back then, this had been the first chance they had, and so far, it had worked. Not yet fully, but it had definitely stopped the cancer from spreading.
That day they were to meet So-young's new oncologists and establish whether they wanted to keep the old treatment plan or whether they wanted to change some things.
"Good morning, we're here to see Dr. Lee Ha-eun. The patient's name is Ahn So-young," Do-il announced.
"Oh yes, the lady from Santorini. Happy to finally meet you. And you're...?"
"I'm her son, Choi Do-il, here's my ID." He handed his ID to the nurse so she could register both of them in their database. She asked for a phone number, an e-mail address, and a physical address in case they might need urgent care. Then she suggested they sit and wait, the doctor would've arrived shortly after.
"I hope they'll keep the cure as it is now. I'm doing fine, why would they need to change it, right?" the woman stated. Every time the day of these appointments approached, his mother would enter a bubble of false positivism, anxiety, and hunger.
"Right. But keep in mind they don't know you yet, they'll probably ask you a bunch of boring questions to see where you're at and how you react. You'll need to have blood tests too, I guess. Depending on that, they'll see how to go about it."
Ahn So-young nodded and crossed her arms to keep from brutalizing her hands.
"Mrs. Ahn So-young?" asked then a doctor in a white scrub. He had a young face, and he gave off ocean wave vibes – the ones that completely calm you down. Do-il's mother rose from her seat and introduced herself. Do-il waited patiently until the two were done and then proceeded to introduce himself as well. Once that was out of the way, they all made their way to the office.

***

"State your name, please."
"Choi Do-il."
"Date of birth?"
"January 7th, 1987."
"Alright sir, I'll register your ID inside our records, I'll print a pass, and you'll be admitted to the visit room, everything's clear?"
"Yes sir." Except, Do-il knew, they'd skip the first part because he had already been registered there when he got arrested after In-joo's trial for misappropriation. And indeed, not even a minute later, the officer glared at him and immediately went to print the pass. He asked no questions, merely handed him the piece of paper and wished him a good day.
Choi Do-il walked past the corridor leading into the complex next door and stopped in the waiting room. Two other people were there with him. He sat down in one of the chairs and made to pull out his phone when the man in front of him gave a small smile and said to him, "Choi Do-il? The Choi Do-il from that scandal a few years ago? I thought I had recognized your face somewhere." After that, the other people in the room turned around to gaze at him, a woman in her fifties even brought a hand to her mouth in what looked like shock. He definitely hadn't missed this part of being back in Korea. He gently nodded his head just once to acknowledge the fact that the man had spoken, but said nothing as he was called in by one of the guards. The person he wanted to talk to was waiting for him already.

"I thought I'dnever see you again."
"That was my intention." He retorted.
"What brings you back, then? A pretty girl had told me you'd flown to Greece. That must have been a nice change." Hee-jae asked him. He hadn't forgotten how his son, willingly or unwillingly, he'd probably have never known, betrayed him, but somehow he still couldn't find it in him to hate him for it.
"Don't get ideas, I'm not here because I wanted to see you, I'm here because mom asked me to." At those words, Do-il's dad stilled.
"What of your mother?" Everyone could say what they wanted about him, but not that he hadn't loved the mother of his child. Then, the war and all that had ensued had ruined everything good he had ever had.
"We went to an appointment with her new doctors here. Her Greek oncologists passed all the material to the new doctors here, but as a precaution, they wanted to give her a full checkup, and -" Do-il paused. His heart started aching just slightly. "Apparently the cures stopped working some weeks ago. That's the raw guess they made today. They'll have to dig deeper into the causes, but cancer has spread again. Not as bad as it was, but we were convinced we'd found the right formula, but instead it must have become accustomed to the medication, which then stopped working properly."
Hee-jae couldn't look his son in the eyes, but he still managed to nod. "Okay, they'll operate on her?"
"We're not yet sure, although they told us that the standard procedure is that she'll probably have to do a round or two of chemo, see how it goes, and then they'll be able to operate." Do-il kept his eyes fixed on his father's every movement. Lips sealed tight. Muscles tensed, as if he were waiting to be ambushed.
"I'll ask this one thing from you, Do-il-ah." The visitor contracted his jaw at the affectionate honorific.
"Please keep me updated. I couldn't be there when I wanted to be, and I won't be able to be there this time either, so please. Please, at least keep me updated on her situation."
Do-il nodded, "I'll do that if omma doesn't mind. She wanted you to know this, but I can't be too sure how much she wants you involved. I'll ask her first. You'll get an answer soon. And by the way," his dad had said a curious thing minutes before, "Oh In-joo-ssi came here? To see you?" He tried to be as nonchalant as possible, but Hee-jae, who had raised his head again a few seconds earlier, could read every single one of his facial expressions.
"She stops by every now and then. She visits the friend who was supposed to be dead, as long as the voices I've heard are telling the truth."
Of course, how could he have forgotten. Hwa-young was detained in this very same prison, and obviously, even five years after everything, In-joo hadn't stopped coming here to visit her, no matter what people might have thought of her.
"Right, Jin Hwa-young-ssi is here too. But she also comes here to see you?"
"She'd come more often in the past, last I saw her must have been... at least six or seven months ago. But she comes here pretty regularly." Hee-jae glared at his son, "If I didn't know any better, I'd say you're pretty curious about her whereabouts. Plus, how'd you know it was her? I've never mentioned her name."
"You've lived as a lone wolf for more than half your life, the only nice girl you may have seen is her."
"Not true. She has two sisters, you know? Funny how you thought about In-joo-ssi right away." Hee-jae knew In-kyung had flown overseas just weeks after his son's departure, and he was there when the youngest had run away, so he guessed there was no way for him to know that the middle one couldn't be the woman he was talking about.
Ironically, however, Hee-jae didn't know that In-kyung had returned and that his son, having seen her, hadn't thought at all about a possible correlation between the two. At his father's remark, Do-il blinked a couple of times, but then he braced himself and stood up from the chair, maintaining eye contact with the old man.
"I'll be in touch if mom wants to. Have a nice day."
And with that, he was on his way out.