Just A Friend

#6

When Nam Seonwoo regained consciousness, he was in the hospital.

The elderly doctor kept pushing up his glasses as he looked back and forth between the monitor and Nam Seonwoo.

“Is that really your answer?”

Nam Seonwoo nodded blankly. He had told the last thing he remembered before collapsing exactly as it happened, but the doctor asked the same question as if he couldn’t believe it.

“Have you ever had mild seizure symptoms in the past? Not necessarily foaming at the mouth, but suddenly blanking out?”

“No…? Not at all.”

Nam Seonwoo couldn’t believe it either. A seizure? He had never been sick before, and if anything, he was too healthy.

The doctor checked various aspects of Nam Seonwoo’s current condition and kept tilting his head. In the elderly doctor’s muttering, Nam Seonwoo could hear frightening words like “brain” and “seizure waves.”

Nam Seonwoo fidgeted with his clothes. It was the t-shirt Kang Jihan had been wearing. He heard that Kang Jihan had carried him on his back when he fainted. It seems he couldn’t bring Nam Seonwoo to the hospital with his upper body exposed.

He must have been surprised. Nam Seonwoo remembered Kang Jihan’s shocked face that he saw before losing consciousness. As he was wondering if he should buy him a new shirt, the doctor asked another question.

“Besides the shuttlecock, have you experienced any physical impacts recently?”

Just as he was about to nod out of habit, a scene flashed through his mind. An overturned car, blood soaking the ground, the faint sound of a radio. The traffic accident that happened before he woke up in his nineteen-year-old body.

Nam Seonwoo carefully spoke up.

“Like what, for example?”

“For instance, falling down stairs, or being in a traffic accident. Well, even if it’s not something that big, tell me if you’ve hit your head anywhere. Even if it seems trivial.”

Nam Seonwoo couldn’t hear the doctor’s words after that. If that really had an impact, it meant that his previous life couldn’t be completely separate from the current one.

‘…What’s going on?’

Is it not a completely new life after all? But things were flowing differently from the past. Not just his relationship with Kang Jihan, but even with badminton. At this rate, unlike in the past, he would get a perfect score.

“There’s no need to be so serious about it. Fortunately, your current condition and everything else is very normal.”

The doctor spoke as if to reassure Nam Seonwoo, seeing his expression.

“Looking at it positively, we might have discovered an unknown underlying condition.”

The doctor was right. Since he had never had an EEG or similar tests in the past, he might have been unaware of any abnormalities in his body. Moreover, the doctor’s questions were simply exploring various possibilities, and it would be premature to conclude that the accident was the cause.

The doctor, suggesting they continue to monitor the situation, concluded the consultation by saying that if Nam Seonwoo collapsed again, they should consider more detailed tests.

As he left the consultation room, Nam Seonwoo realized he hadn’t brought his wallet. With the scans they had done, the bill would be quite substantial. As he was wondering if he should contact his parents, a nurse approached.

“Student, you don’t need to pay! Your friend already took care of it.”

“What?”

“That guardian friend of yours. He also asked me to give you this.”

The nurse handed Nam Seonwoo a note. By guardian… it seemed she meant Kang Jihan. Since his parents were on an overseas business trip, Kang Jihan, who had brought him here, naturally became his guardian.

Nam Seonwoo recalled what happened before he entered the consultation room. When he opened his eyes, Kang Jihan had an expression he had never seen before. It was a fleeting expression that disappeared before he could read it, but he definitely looked surprised. Even after seeing Nam Seonwoo regain consciousness, he was reluctant to leave. Only when Nam Seonwoo lied that “my uncle will be here soon” did Kang Jihan finally leave the hospital.

As he unfolded the twice-folded paper, he saw three characters written in a familiar handwriting.

“Call me.”

And the phone number written below it was also very familiar to Nam Seonwoo.

“You’ve got a good friend, huh? But you don’t know your friend’s number?”

The nurse grinned mischievously. Nam Seonwoo smiled awkwardly in response, and she added that he should definitely bring his parents for the next appointment.

As soon as he left the hospital, Nam Seonwoo threw the note in his hand into the first trash can he saw. It would be proper to at least let Kang Jihan know that he had received good treatment and was fine, since he had brought him this far. But he wondered if he really needed to. Above all, this time, he didn’t want to leave his contact information on Kang Jihan’s phone.

‘I’ll just tell him at school.’

The unfamiliar t-shirt was quite loose on him. The wind that entered through the gaps felt unusually cool for summer.

An unexpected event had occurred, but the time of a third-year high school student flew by quickly.

As soon as Nam Seonwoo met Kang Jihan at school, he returned the washed clothes. When he didn’t say anything other than thanking him for that day, Kang Jihan didn’t ask anything either.

The physical education performance evaluation went as expected. Kang Jihan’s shuttlecock flew in a stable arc, and their rally easily exceeded 50 hits. It was a perfect score.

Starting with P.E., other performance evaluations also came in quick succession. Being in the third year, most subjects ended with simple individual assignments, but Korean was a bit different. The performance goal for the “Literature and Communication” unit was “to practice respect and consideration through literary imagination.” The resulting performance evaluation was quite cute.

“Use your limited imagination to the fullest and do three helpful actions for a friend. Hey, be quiet! I was originally going to make it five, but I reduced it to three. Instead, a handwritten letter is mandatory. I’ll check everything, so write sincerely.”

The young and enthusiastic Korean teacher threw a “Manito” mission at the gloomy boys. Moreover, the mandatory mission was to deliver a handwritten letter praising the other person’s strengths. Despite the reactions of scratching arms and making gagging noises at the thought of how cheesy it was, the teacher remained firm.

Nam Seonwoo’s expression also turned pale as soon as he heard about the Manito. If his memory was correct, he was Kang Jihan’s Manito.

‘This is really driving me crazy.’

It felt like someone was mocking his resolve to not get involved with Kang Jihan. But Nam Seonwoo had no intention of following the past obediently.

They started drawing Manito names one by one. When it was Nam Seonwoo’s turn, he rummaged through the draw box and deliberately spilled it on the floor. The Manito slips inside the box got all mixed up on the floor. As expected, the loosely folded slips allowed the letters inside to be visible.

Nam Seonwoo, straining his eyes, quickly picked up a paper that seemed to show “Kim.” When he returned to his seat and opened the paper, it had Kim Jaewoo written on it, not Kang Jihan. It was a success.

“We start right now. Class president, collect the reflection papers in five days and submit them.”

As soon as the teacher left, the students started buzzing. They were giggling and exchanging information about who got whom, seeming quite enjoyable despite saying it was childish. Park Gyuhyeon approached with a somewhat gloomy expression.

“Who did you get?”

Instead of answering, Nam Seonwoo showed him the slip. Park Gyuhyeon let out a long sigh, as if envious. Curious about who he got, Nam Seonwoo snatched the slip from his hand and opened it, finding a familiar name written there.

“Kang Jihan”

Unable to hold back his laughter, Nam Seonwoo burst out laughing, and Park Gyuhyeon put him in a headlock.

“Are you mocking me? You think it’s easy for you, huh?”

“Hey, Bak-gyu. You shouldn’t talk like that. There’s no easy or difficult when it comes to friends.”

“Are you teasing me now? Ah, this is super high difficulty. If we have to write a reflection paper too, the other person’s reaction is important, right? But I…”

Yeah, it must be hard being Kang Jihan’s Manito. Nam Seonwoo nodded. No matter what you do for him, it’s hard to tell if he appreciated it or not due to his lack of reaction, and he doesn’t even stay for night study, so he’s in the classroom for relatively less time. As Nam Seonwoo was silently apologizing, Park Gyuhyeon released his arm.

“But why do you look so tired today? Did you stay up all night?”

“Yeah. I’m dying.”

Now that he had traveled back in time, the most urgent matter was the June mock exam coming up soon. There was no way he could remember the college entrance exam from fifteen years ago, and he couldn’t use any shortcuts. It was fortunate that he had been in the teaching profession; otherwise, he might have given up due to the overwhelming amount of memorization required. Staying up all night with problem books was harder than he had expected.

Nam Seonwoo didn’t even have the energy to hit Park Gyuhyeon, who was giggling and asking what kind of videos he had been watching. Waving his hand to shoo him away, Nam Seonwoo lay down on his desk, intending to catch a brief nap.

When you wake up, you have a gut feeling.

A refreshed body feeling like you’ve slept well, the surroundings quiet as a mouse, the chirping of birds in between… No, it was the homeroom teacher’s voice. Nam Seonwoo rolled just his eyeballs.

“…!”

He quickly raised his head and met eyes with the homeroom teacher. Around him, he could hear muffled laughter. Seeing the blackboard full of math, the homeroom teacher’s subject, it seemed to be the last period. In other words, the 10 minutes he intended to nap had turned into 3 hours.

“Quiet. The class president must have studied so hard to end up like this. Even drooling.”

Nam Seonwoo wiped his mouth. The textbook he had used as a pillow was already stained. He kept bowing his head and apologizing, but the homeroom teacher just laughed heartily and continued the lesson. Knowing how frustrating it is for a teacher when students openly sleep in class made it even more embarrassing.

‘…Wait. I’m on duty today.’

Having slept so deeply, he couldn’t have erased the blackboard during breaks. But the eraser was clean without a speck of chalk dust. Come to think of it, no one had woken him up to erase the board either. Just then, he noticed the Manito slip stuffed into his pencil case.

‘Could it be my Manito?’

He hadn’t expected much from a Manito in an all-boys school, but it seemed his Manito had done something quite nice. It felt like having an invisible helper, which made him feel quite good. Whoever it was, he felt like patting them on the back.