Chapter 5

Hmm. As the examination came to an end, a single vertical crease formed between the doctor’s brows.

“It’s amnesia.”

“Pardon?”

Ji-an’s mouth fell open, and so did Chief Choi’s. Ji-an asked again, as if she couldn’t believe it.

“A-amnesia? That’s something that actually happens?”

The two of them had gone white as paper, but Sa-heon, the one it had actually happened to, sat with his arms folded and a perfectly untroubled look on his face.

“It isn’t common, but it isn’t unheard of either.”

The doctor pushed up a pair of round glasses and explained calmly.

“You could call it retrograde amnesia. The memories from before a certain point are intact, but everything after that point is lost. He took an impact near the crown of the head in the accident, and it’s very likely the resulting concussion and the psychological shock combined.”

Pointing at the screen with the mouse cursor, the doctor went on.

“The MRI shows no direct brain damage, but even where there’s no visible structural injury, an impact like this can cause a temporary drop in function in the hippocampus, the region responsible for memory.”

“Temporary — so does that mean it’ll come back?”

Ji-an’s question came out urgent, and the doctor nodded.

“Yes. Most cases recover with time. But… in a case like Mr. Lee Sa-heon’s, there’s one more unusual feature.”

“Wh-what is it?”

“He also has confabulatory amnesia. It’s sometimes called false memory. May I have your name?”

“M-me?”

“Yes.”

The question came out of nowhere, and she answered, thoroughly flustered.

“Han Ji-an.”

“Ah, right. He seems to remember you as his lover, Ms. Han Ji-an.”

“Pardon?”

Ji-an’s face turned scarlet in an instant. Sa-heon, who had been gazing blankly at her obvious fluster, grumbled.

“But it’s true. You’re my honey.”

“Pardon?! N-not at all! I am absolutely not the Managing Director’s honey!”

Ji-an waved both hands and denied it fiercely, and Sa-heon let out a hollow laugh.

“Do you have to wave your hands around on top of it? You’re tearing my heart in two.”

“Is there no treatment for it?”

Chief Choi, who wasn’t easily shaken, stepped forward and asked quickly. The doctor went hmm and rubbed their chin.

“It takes time. Rather than forcibly denying the memory, what matters is building up new relationships and new memories. So that the real memories can come back gradually.”

Calmly taking notes, the doctor turned to Sa-heon with a question.

“Mr. Lee Sa-heon, I just have a few more questions for you. How old are you now?”

“Twenty-one.”

He’d named an age a full twelve years short of his own. Ji-an’s eyes went wide without a sound, and even Chief of Staff Choi Kang-hoon let slip a small sigh.

“And your family?”

“I have two older half-brothers. My father is the Chairman of the Hyeongang Group, and my mother has passed away.”

The doctor nodded placidly.

“And what are you doing at the moment — work, or study?”

“I’m in the business administration department at S University, and since it’s the vacation right now, I’m doing an internship at my father’s company.”

“Then how did you meet Ms. Han Ji-an?”

“We met during the internship. I saw her at the company and fell for her at first sight.”

He’d been answering so well, and then a lie popped out of nowhere. Ji-an’s jaw dropped. The doctor only nodded with a serious face and asked another question.

“Then do you have any memory of going on a date with Ms. Han Ji-an?”

“No.”

Sa-heon sank into thought for a moment, then fixed his eyes on Ji-an and spoke.

“A woman called Han Ji-an, her face and her name… All I remember is that I fell for her the moment I saw her at the company, that we were lovers, and that I loved this woman.”

“You have no memory of a date, nothing connected to one. So what made you so certain she was your lover?”

Sa-heon shrugged as if it were nothing much.

“A feeling. You don’t fail to recognize your wife or your lover just because you’ve woken up from a nap, do you? It’s the same thing. The moment I first laid eyes on her, my first thought was that she was my woman.”

The confession was so earnest that the consulting room fell silent.

What on earth is he talking about? Why does he say things that aren’t even true as if they were real?

Ji-an turned away, her face suddenly hot. She had no idea why her heart was pounding like this.

“Could you be mixing me up with a woman you met back during that internship?”

She barely managed to get the question out. Chief Choi, who’d been standing by with a grave face, shook his head and answered in Sa-heon’s place.

“No. As far as I know, his older brothers had already joined the company by then, so the Managing Director was gritting his teeth to outdo them both. That’s why he had no interest in anything like romance.”

“I see…”

Then why on earth had his memory warped in this particular direction? Ji-an rubbed her arm, troubled, and Sa-heon let out a small sigh of his own, as if his mood had soured too.

“In most cases the memory gradually recovers as time passes. Amnesia from a mild trauma in particular often shows a good prognosis.”

The doctor added it with a reassuring smile.

“That said, in cases like this the personality usually changes as well, so for a while he’ll feel like a different person — but with steady memory rehabilitation exercises he’ll improve quickly. And above all, try to talk with Ms. Han Ji-an as much as you can.”

“Yes. Thank you.”

When the consultation was over, Chief Choi helped Sa-heon to his feet, and Ji-an trailed after them with her shoulders drooping.

Chief Choi had stepped out to take a work call, which left the two of them alone in the hospital room with an awkward silence between them.

Sa-heon lay at a crooked angle on the bed, watching her. Ji-an pretended not to feel his gaze poking at her cheek and rummaged through his medications for no reason at all.

“Honey, are you really going to keep pretending you don’t know me?”

Sa-heon had been quiet for a long while, but now he rubbed the space between his brows and asked. The words gave her goosebumps. Her shoulders twitched, and she tore open the medicine packet.

“Managing Director, it’s time for your medicine.”

“…”

He tossed the pills back with the water, looking sour, then set the cup down and asked, dead serious.

“You’re not doing this because you want to use the chance to break up with me, are you?”

There was something almost tenacious in the eyes that searched her as he said it. His symptoms were serious. Very serious indeed.

Ji-an only fidgeted with the medicine packet, unable to keep still, and Sa-heon heaved a deep sigh and pressed a hand to his forehead.

“…You’re really telling me you’re not my honey?”

“That’s right.”

“Are you a married woman, by any chance?”

“Pardon?! No.”

“Good to hear there’s nobody I’d have to kill, then.”

He murmured it darkly, then asked again.

“What about a lover? Do you have a boyfriend?”

“Uh, no.”

“How about me.”

There he went again, out of nowhere. Ji-an’s gaze wavered and slid to the door Chief Choi had left through.

Chief Choi, I think our secretariat is in genuinely serious trouble…

The look in Sa-heon’s eyes sharpened at once.

“Who are you looking for? Don’t tell me — Chief Choi? What is there between the two of you?”

Ji-an’s shoulders twitched, and she waved her hands.

“Pardon?! Absolutely not! Chief Choi is my superior, so I was only wondering what to do about this situation!”

Haa. Sa-heon let out a long sigh and swept his bangs back with his fingers.

For a moment his smooth forehead was bared, and it contrasted oddly with his firmly pressed lips. His profile was, once again, perfect.

“It’s because I keep thinking you’re my lover, Ji-an.”

He’s clearly a sick man, and that’s the only reason he says things like that…

“See? Even now, it’s nothing at all, and the first thing I do is get jealous.”

So why was her heart pounding and carrying on like this? Ji-an hurriedly fanned her burning face with her hand.

Sa-heon had been watching her with a serious face. Slowly, he rubbed between his brows and asked.

“Did you ever make me something? Kimchi…?”

“Oh! That’s right! That’s right! Do you remember?”

Ji-an’s eyes went round.

The previous winter, Hyeongang had hosted a community give-back event to bring a warm meal to neglected neighbors: a kimjang drive, making and sharing kimchi¹. On that occasion Ji-an had handed Sa-heon some kimchi she’d pickled with her own hands.

“Yes. I can picture you smiling as you handed it to me, Ji-an. I think I was really happy about it.”

“…No.”

Ji-an’s face fell.

“Then?”

“You said it was filthy and wouldn’t take it… you asked how you were supposed to trust something a whole crowd of people had made…”

“So I actually liked it and pretended not to, out of embarrassment. Apparently I was the shy type.”

Sa-heon made the excuse without a shred of shame and smiled.

Shy, my foot. He was the single most blunt man I know. Ji-an shot him a look with no real edge to it and let out a small sigh.

“It’s all right. Thinking about it now, even I wouldn’t have wanted to eat it.”

“I’ve never been any good at showing what I feel. Because I was never loved.”

He wiped the laughter off his face, let the outer corners of his eyes droop, and played at being pitiful.

“Still, look — I’ve forgotten everything, and I still remember your face, Ji-an, and a scene here and there. Isn’t that impressive of me?”

The voice that whispered it, with a low sigh trailing after,

“So take me in, sweetheart. Hm?”

and the smiling face that went with it were far too beguiling.

“I can’t do that.”

Ji-an turned her back on him completely and shook her head.

“You’re just ill for the moment and confused, Managing Director. You aren’t in your right mind.”

“Okay, honey, I get it, so let’s talk face to face.”

At some point he’d gotten up from the bed, and that beguiling voice now whispered from right behind her. Ji-an crushed the urge to turn around and went on.

“I may have been your lover in your memory, Managing Director, but in reality you are simply my superior. If you keep on like this, it really does put me in a difficult position.”

“Look how cold-hearted she is. That’s maddeningly attractive, ha… I knew it, it wasn’t just her face that was pretty.”

Had he heard a single word she’d said? All he did was murmur things sappy enough to raise the hair on her arms, in that same earnest voice.

“Then at least help me find my memories. You can do that much, can’t you.”

His momentum had dropped, so Ji-an turned with a low sigh and looked at him.

“That, I’ll help you with.”

“Then hold my hand, sweetheart.”

Holding hands might bring some of my memory back. Sa-heon held out his hand as if he’d been waiting for exactly this and grinned. It was a splendid grin, and Ji-an’s face went scarlet in an instant.

“I’m not playing around. I’m being serious! Managing Director.”

How many times had this man made her face burn today alone? Ji-an bristled and set her face hard, and the mischief went out of his smile.

“I’m being serious too.”

“You don’t look it in the slightest.”

“Think about it. I open my eyes and overnight I’m more than ten years older, and on top of that my girlfriend denies me, says we never dated at all.”

Beneath a brow bone that looked carved by an artist who’d taken his time over it, his face smiled bitterly, a reddish wound marking it, far too wistful and far too handsome.

“How do you think I feel?”

At the sight of it, the words stopped dead in Ji-an’s throat.

…Right, he must be terribly confused, having lost his memory. I’m the one overreacting. There’s no need to be as cold-hearted as all this.

It must be just as he’d said. It would feel like being put in a time machine overnight and carried more than ten years forward, and to make matters worse, he had no one to lean on.

That had to be why he was leaning on her so blindly. He’d even gone so far as to mistake her for his lover.

With all this going on, he had to be anxious. And come to think of it, twenty-one really was very young.

Having thought it through that far, Ji-an let out a low sigh and comforted him.

“Don’t worry too much. You’ll be able to find your memories again soon. I’ll do my very best to help, too.”

“Then promise me, honey, that you’ll stay at my side twenty-four hours a day.”

“Yes.”

Ji-an nodded without thinking, then started in alarm.

“…Pardon?!”

“You promised.”

Sa-heon smiled beguilingly. The wistful, lonely look in his eyes from a moment ago was nowhere to be found.