Chapter 56: Growth (1)

The incident with Dong-in had been swept under the rug, kept on a strict need to know basis. Fortunately, Dong-in had regained consciousness and returned to the institute, though he left soon after to be transferred to another facility. This, too, was kept on a need to know basis, to the point that even some institute staff were kept in the dark about the exact reason for such a rushed transfer. They couldn’t even work up the courage to ask the higher ups, given how serious and secretive they were acting.

Ki-woong found himself to be one of the few who were “in the know,” since he had been involved from the very beginning. He had found the hypothermic Dong-in and even took part in the transfer process to send the younger boy elsewhere. In fact, he was the only resident to know the exact proceedings of the whole affair.

The day before Dong-in was to leave, Ki-woong had gone to find him. Dong-in had been packing his things in complete silence, though the only things he possessed were a few textbooks and clothes.

“Are you sure about this?” Ki-woong had asked, but no answer had come.

Ever since Dong-in had woken up at the hospital, he hadn’t spoken a word. Ki-woong had stayed with him the whole time, helping him get discharged and visiting him when he had holed himself in his room. Still, Dong-in hadn’t spoken a single word, despite Ki-woong’s every attempt to console him. He wouldn’t even have found out about Dong-in’s transfer if one of the teachers hadn’t mentioned it to him first.

“Dong-in, I really don’t know what happened up there, so I don’t really know what to tell you,” Ki-woong started hesitantly, “but as I’ve told you before, I’m on your side. Whatever’s bothering you, you can talk to me about it. I’ll try my best to help you.”

Dong-in had finished packing long before Ki-woong’s speech, but he still wandered about the room, afraid of the consequences should he stop moving. He knew that the moment he stopped, he would have to face Ki-woong and actually talk to him, and this terrified him. He didn’t want to talk to anyone right now. Even the transfer had only been approved after he spoke to the chairman, letting him know just how desperate he was to get out of here.

“I’m scared. I can’t stay here. I’ll die here,” he had said, over and over again. After perhaps the twentieth time, the chairman finally accepted it.

“Dong-in,” Ki-woong called again, “just talk to me. I don’t understand how leaving like this is going to help you. If there’s something bothering you, or if there’s an actual problem, you need to resolve it. That’s the only way you can move on. You’re just running away. That won’t do anything for you.”

At Ki-woong’s pleading tone, Dong-in finally turned around to face him. He could clearly see just how hard the older boy was trying, and he felt bad about it. Besides, this would be his last chance to talk to Ki-woong. He would tell him everything.

“I can’t… I can’t stay here. I’ll die if I do.”

This made very little sense to Ki-woong, and he wanted nothing more than to ask for further explanations, but he couldn’t bring himself to say anything. Dong-in’s face was pale. He was clearly terrified, to the point that Ki-woong himself felt in danger.

“That… That was just an accident. Dong-in, no one’s going to hurt you.” Ki-woong said at last.

“No. He tried to kill me. He did.”

“Who did?”

“…”

Although Dong-in didn’t say anything, Ki-woong already knew the answer to his own question. The problem was that it was a ridiculous notion. The boy was still just a first grader and a victim of Dong-in’s violence, both within the institute and on top of the mountain. He had no weapons and wasn’t physically strong enough to even threaten Dong-in. Even now, the boy showed no signs of aggression at all. Still, Ki-woong remembered the look in the boy’s eyes when he had asked why violence was wrong. Something had felt off back then (did people usually have to explain such things?), and it felt off even now as he thought back about it, but no. It couldn’t be. Surely he was mistaken. Maybe people did have to explain such things to children. After all, the notions of morality and ethics had to be learned over time, and given the boy’s age, it was the duty of both public and private educations to teach such things, along with the concept of law, culture, society, and rules.

“Dong-in…” Ki-woong sighed.

Dong-in had experienced a lifethreatening condition, which must have caused serious psychological trauma. This was why he was now paranoid, having delusions about people wanting to kill him. It was clear, from the way he shook his leg and twisted his fingers about.

“He tried to kill me,” he muttered.

Perhaps he was even experiencing hallucinations, both visual and auditory. Dong-in’s lips trembled incessantly, and he chewed on them over and over.

“I didn’t do anything wrong. What happened to Somi wasn’t my fault. I didn’t do anything.”

Indeed, he was delusional and now seemed to show signs of victim complex. This almost always resulted in a loss of social skills which caused even further problems. Dong-in continued to mutter under his breath, and Ki-woong had to look away. His eyes stung with tears.

Ki-woong had left Dong-in’s room, then. He had been unable to console him, and now Dong-in was gone.

The day Dong-in left, Ki-woong stood at the window and watched him leave. He saw Dong-in turn around as he reached the front gate, and he briefly wondered whether he should wave. He decided not to. Ki-woong’s chest tightened as old memories came flooding back.

Things at Ki-woong’s house never lasted long, always ending up broken or chipped or in the trash because of his mother. She threw any and everything she could get her hands on. Every time Ki-woong’s father came home from work, she would run away from him, screaming at the top of her lungs that he was going to kill her. She often did this to Ki-woong as well, though she more often tried to kill him rather than run away from him. At night, his father always made sure to bring Ki-woong to his room so they could sleep together. The door would be tightly locked, and they had to endure the endless screaming and kicking of the door throughout the night.

One day, Ki-woong’s mother had caught him. He didn’t remember how or why, but he did remember one thing.

“I’m sorry,” she had whispered, tears streaming down her face.

Then, his father had appeared, releasing him from her hold. Sirens blared outside, and Ki-woong was taken to the hospital, and then to the Agnes Institute.

To this day, Ki-woong didn’t quite know what had happened or how things had ended, but he understood that both his mother and his father had passed away. He had only found out about this because one of the institute teachers had taken him to a charnel house to visit them. He also learned just how terrifying schizophrenia could be, and that was why he had decided to go to medical school. It wasn’t because he wanted to find a cure for this illness. He wasn’t so thoughtful or selfless to make such a decision based on altruism alone. No, he had decided to go to medical school because that was the only way to truly protect himself.

“You see, schizophrenia could be genetic.”

Indeed, he was afraid of becoming like his mother.

There was yet another person watching Dong-in leave, and just like Ki-woong, he was also immersed in thought. It was Lucid, and he had quite a lot to think about. The incident with Dong-in had left him to ponder about many things, such as how to deal with someone who was openly hostile to him, his viewpoint on the world and on human relations, and his overconfidence and resulting control on the power of magic. But regardless of such topics, as he watched Dong-in leave, he was filled with two main emotions.

Hatred.

His hatred was linked to how he had felt as he watched Somi, who had also been a victim of Dong-in’s hostility. Lucid finally, truly understood how she must have felt, her sadness and anguish. It had all been so unfair. And once he understood this, he realized just how hurtful Dong-in’s words and actions were, so selfish and inconsiderate as they had been, and he came to dislike him. Indeed, he hated Dong-in.

And guilt.

In the end, Lucid had acted in much the same way. He had been hostile towards Dong-in, unwilling to understand him. He had been inconsiderate and had even tried to kill him. Indeed, he had gotten very close to ending his life, going so far as to use his magic to accomplish this. He had made Dong-in hate him the same way he had hated Dong-in.

But this incident wasn’t without its lessons. Lucid realized that he hadn’t really thought to care about other people’s thoughts or feelings, and because he hadn’t cared, he hadn’t tried to understand others, either, and he had been inconsiderate towards them. He thought back to an idiom he had read in one of his books. “Before you judge a man, walk a mile in his shoes.”

Because he hadn’t been considerate towards Dong-in, he, too, had been inconsiderate towards him. Because he hadn’t tried to understand Dong-in, he, too, hadn’t understood him. If he had tried to understand Dong-in, would Dong-in have been more understanding?

This, Lucid thought, was a question that Ki-woong had already answered. In the end, people needed to communicate. They needed to talk things out, understand each other’s feelings, and be more thoughtful.

Lucid couldn’t help but sigh. In the end, he had had to experience things for himself to understand the depth of Ki-woong’s words. No matter how much he read and memorized and thought about things, as long as he didn’t truly try to understand their meaning, he was just filling his head with empty nothings. Even science had to be proven through experiments and tests. In the end, without understanding and experience, his head was nothing but a big, big trash can of theories and ideas.

“Am I the victim, or the villain?” he asked himself. He couldn’t even fathom how long it would take him to truly answer this question. He turned away from the window, and Dong-in left the institute.

<hr />

Winter that year was especially cold, to the point that pipelines froze and burst all throughout the city of Inpyeong. This was fixed easily enough (this was the 21st century after all), and maintenance workers got the pipelines working again in less than a day. Still, people found things to complain about all the time, and the few hours of inconvenience were a perfect topic to cover. Soon, the newspapers were filled with articles discussing the countless households who had gone through so much trouble because of the pipes, and the city had given a formal response in return. They would increase welfare funds so that citizens, especially those in more rural areas of the city, would no longer be inconvenienced by such incidents.

The institute wasn’t safe from the cold, either, and all the trees and flowers that once adorned the grounds now shriveled and shrunk, waiting for the warmth of spring to thaw them again. But the children seemed to be wholly unaffected, and they ran outside to play as usual. After all, winter cannot stop children from growing.

Lucid also grew and matured. He had gone to Yun-jeong and begged her to take him to the library again, and he had taken to scurrying about the institute with Myeong-su. More accurately, Myeong-su scurried about the institute while Lucid cleaned up after him, but he spent more time with his friend nonetheless. He also began to talk to Ki-woong more, and the older boy did all he could to help Lucid study, from lending him books to discussing things and teaching him new concepts.

On Ki-woong’s part, he couldn’t help but be amazed by the young boy. He had heard rumors about his genius, but he was still just a first grader. Yet here he was, solving middle school level mathematics like nothing. Hearing about a prodigy was one thing, but seeing one up close was something else entirely. But even this genius had issues understanding some of the theories, and seeing him struggle over some of the problems made Lucid seem like just any other ordinary elementary schooler.

Indeed, even if Lucid did read plenty of books, five to six years were still a long time to catch up on. In that time, children learned through exposure to media and society, as well as being taught in school and by families. This kind of experience led to better understanding of sentences and words, since it allowed children to put things in perspective and understand context. This, added to the fact that most of the books Lucid was reading were from the elementary school library, severely limited Lucid’s learning.

However, Ki-woong knew that given a few years, Lucid would come to fully understand the entirety of the middle school curriculum. He was more than gifted enough to accomplish such a thing.

These weren’t the only changes Lucid had made in his daily life. Just as he had done when he first arrived to this world, he had gone back to reading whatever he could get his hands on, without caring about their topics. This was because he had realized that being too focused on one subject had caused him to be biased and narrow-minded. He would need to read more about more things so that he could expand his knowledge and gain a broader view of the world, and ultimately wonder more about his own beliefs.

He also began to actively play soccer with the other children at the institute. Of course, there was no magic involved there (what fun was there in that?), since he was good at it even without it.

The children also felt more attached to Lucid. Before, he had felt completely foreign, always alone in a corner to read. Perhaps the nickname “plaster face” seemed so fitting not only because of his looks, but also because of his tendency to be so far removed from everyone that all they could do was watch him from a distance. Now, however, he really felt like friend.

“Plaster face! Let’s go eat!”

Though of course, that didn’t change the fact they still referred to him as such.

“Coming! Hyung, let’s go!”

Cheol-yong grinned as Lucid called to him, and wiped his sweat away.

“On my way!”

“Hey, I’m coming too!” Myeong-su shouted from across the field.

“Of course you are!” Lucid shouted back. “Why would I leave you here?”

Myeong-su rushed over to Lucid, running through the courtyard like a puppy off its leash.

<Growth (1)> End.