Chapter 2 – First, I Need to Have That

A few days later.

“Now, I will dress the wound for you. We will untie the bandage today. I will only treat the surgical site lightly.”

The nurse skillfully began to untie the bandage wrapped around Geum Nae-yeong’s head.

“The doctor is here.”

The attending physician entered the hospital room.

“Patient Geum Nae-yeong, how is your body condition?”

“My stomach keeps churning, but it is better than yesterday.”

After checking Geum Nae-yeong’s condition, the attending physician approached the patient on the opposite side.

“Give me the chart.”

The doctor requested the chart from the nurse standing next to him.

“···Huh? Why isn’t it here?”

The nurse looked around the bed in confusion.

“The chart.”

The doctor’s voice rose by one tone.

“I’m sorry, Dr. Seo. The··· duty nurse was Nurse Kim··· I wonder where they put the chart···”

“What? What do you mean the patient’s chart is missing! There must also be records of what was treated in the morning!!”

At the doctor’s half-informal shout, the hospital room fell into a sudden silence.

“···Blood pressure 130 over 78.”

“···Amoxicillin, fentanyl 1.5cc prescribed.”

Someone quietly spoke up, and at that moment, everyone’s gaze turned toward that direction.

It was Geum Nae-yeong.

“···Nae-yeong? What··· what are you saying?”

Mother looked at Geum Nae-yeong with startled eyes.

“At 6:20, Nurse Kim Ji-min measured the blood pressure. 130 over 78.

At 9:55, attending physician Seo Hyeon-woo ordered Amoxicillin and fentanyl injections.

At 10:15, after the nurse handoff, visited room 401.”

While Geum Nae-yeong spoke quietly yet clearly, people felt that his voice was somehow like a machine sound.

“···Call Nurse Kim··· to find out where they put the chart.”

Hearing Geum Nae-yeong’s story, the doctor gave instructions half-believing and half-doubting, in an irritated manner.

After a short while, the nurse returned.

“They said the blood pressure was 130 over 78, they processed the Amoxicillin and fentanyl prescriptions, and then went off duty···”

People’s gazes turned to Geum Nae-yeong once again.

“Wow··· the kid is really smart. He remembers everything the nurse said from dawn to morning?”

The guardian of the patient on the opposite side was amazed.

“My son, originally, ranks among the top in the entire school in studying.”

Mother spoke with a proud expression.

“He will grow up to be a doctor later.”

People smiled and nodded.

And in the afternoon a few days later.

“Get your hands off of me!”

“Why are you doing this!”

“Why am I doing this? Fuck, five million won is missing right now, and you expect me not to curse?”

“W-what five million?”

“The money put aside for hospital bills! I put it in this shopping bag and kept it in the cabinet, but it vanished without a trace! Is there anyone else here who would touch that money besides you, ahjumma?”

The bed opposite Geum Nae-yeong’s.

An argument between a middle-aged caregiver tending to an elderly patient and a man who was the guardian made the entire hospital room noisy. The voices soon spread to the ward hallway.

“Hand it over while I’m speaking nicely. Before I call the police.”

“On what evidence are you saying I took it! Don’t frame an innocent person!”

“You heard me say this morning that I was going to pay the hospital bills! The only time I left the room was for just 10 minutes to go to the restroom, and who else was here besides you, ahjumma?”

“What? How would I know what was in that shopping bag and where it was!”

“You said it then! That you had money. Money to pay the hospital bills! There’s no way you didn’t hear it!”

“Why is everyone doing this! You must not make a disturbance in the hospital room!”

A nurse who came after hearing the disturbance tried to stop them, but it was useless.

“Aren’t you in on this too? The caregiver recommended by the hospital just swallowed five million won! This won’t do, I must call the police right away!”

When the man’s loud voice erupted.

“4:20, sheet replacement time. 4:23, sheet replacement complete. 4:30, blood pressure check time. 4:33, blood pressure check complete.”

“···Nae-yeong?”

Geum Nae-yeong sat leaning his back against the bed, muttering in a clear voice as if talking to himself.

People’s gazes turned to him.

“4:35, external insurance agent visit. Blue checkered shirt, black skirt bottom···”

“What··· what is he saying···?”

‘···Hmm. My memory cannot be wrong. Let’s see··· sheet replacement··· at that time. If they check the collection bin, it will come out right away··· should I tell them or not.’

In Geum Nae-yeong’s head, the scene of the nurse lifting the sheet at 4:21 AM was playing back like a video.

And click.

The screen stopped at the scene where the shopping bag, which had been rolled up small and placed on one side of the bed, got caught right between the bedsheets.

“Check the sheet collection bin.”

“What··· what?”

The man who was shouting looked at Geum Nae-yeong.

“What, is this kid crazy? He’s talking nonsense.”

At those words, Geum Nae-yeong’s mother jumped up and shouted.

“What? This kid? Who is crazy relative to someone else’s child?? Who do you think you’re talking down to right now!”

At Mother’s strong anger, the man shrank for a moment and stopped talking.

“At 4:21, lifted the sheet. At that moment, the money envelope was rolled in together.”

All eyes in the hospital room focused on Geum Nae-yeong.

Then, the guardian of the diagonal bed spoke carefully.

“Just in case··· really, check the sheet collection bin once. It looks like the kid saw something···”

The man went out to the hallway with a still unsatisfied expression.

And before long, he returned carrying the money in the rolled-up shopping bag.

“···I-I am sorry. I definitely thought I put it in the cabinet··· why did this get dragged along with the blanket···”

The caregiver glared at the man with a stiff face, and the man hung his head, feeling embarrassed.

The diagonal guardian was amazed.

“Oh my··· the kid is really smart, isn’t he? I thought he was just lying down because he was sick, but he saw all of that.”

“Your son is indeed very intelligent.”

Mother smiled brightly at the compliments from the guardians in the hospital room, but as her son repeated the same words like a machine, she soon began to look at him with complex eyes.

***

“Please write your name and the first part of your resident registration number here.”

Geum Nae-yeong’s mother wrote her son’s name with her right hand, while naturally covering the writing with her left hand. No one was watching, but she felt like covering it for no reason. In this place.

“Please sit down. I’ll call you when it’s your turn.”

The clinic was small and quiet.

On one side of the bookshelf, books with titles like Brain Science, The Mental World, and Freud were neatly arranged.

However, for Mother, whose highest education was graduating from middle school, they were words she had heard for the first time in her life, and books she would probably never need to know, nor have the opportunity to know, in the future.

Beside her, Geum Nae-yeong was looking at such a bookshelf with a strange smile.

“Geum Nae-yeong.”

When his name was called, Geum Nae-yeong, wearing his school uniform, lowered his phone screen and slowly stood up.

The treatment room was the same as the day he filled out the examination sheet. All kinds of documents and books were tangled on the desk, and the doctor still held the chart with a expressionless face, with his glasses hanging on the tip of his nose.

“Sit down.”

Mother felt sweat break out on her palms without realizing it.

The doctor scanned the chart with his eyes and then slowly opened his mouth.

“Hmm··· how should I say it to make it easy to understand. First, I’ll share the good news.”

He raised his head.

“Your son is smart. Extremely so. Looking at the test results, talking about IQ and whatnot at this point doesn’t mean much but··· if I have to specify, he is in the top 0.1%. Or even higher. It’s at an unmeasurable level. There is also a high possibility it will rise further when he becomes an adult.”

“···Pardon?”

Color returned to Mother’s face. Her son had been good at studying since he was young.

He was within the top five in his class in middle school, and since entering high school, he had been at the top of the entire school. However, hearing ‘top 0.1%’ from a hospital, and from a psychiatrist’s mouth, carried a different weight.

“Hmm··· but.”

The doctor pulled out a sheet of paper he held in his hand and pushed it forward.

On the paper full of graphs, the text written at the top could be seen. PCL-R.

“If you look here··· his score is in the 30s. It is ambiguous, but we should view it as borderline.”

“Border··· line?”

“Psychopathy.”

“···Excuse me? What does that mean?”

At the suddenly thrown word, Mother was lost for words.

Geum Nae-yeong, who was sitting right next to her, nodded quietly and spoke.

“You’re saying that I have antisocial tendencies.”

“···What?”

At Geum Nae-yeong’s words, Mother asked back in confusion, and the doctor cleared his throat as if embarrassed and continued speaking.

“Well, this is a spectrum after all. Some people are highly violent, while others just have low empathy. They’re all different. The common characteristic is one: lack of interpersonal empathy.

Fortunately, the score is not extremely high, so he is not the ‘mainstream’, but rather an offshoot if anything.

Being an offshoot means that he can have interpersonal relationships or empathy with people close to him, but he may experience difficulties with people he meets for the first time or with whom he has no deep relationship···”

“···Offshoot.”

The word Mother understood.

Fixing on that word, she did not even hear the doctor’s subsequent words.

‘Offshoot.’

‘Who is this quack bastard calling my son an offshoot?’

She felt choked up, but she held it in because her son was next to her.

In the world of Mother, who had only finished middle school, her son was the best. The first-rate of the first-rate. What did this quack know? How first-rate her son was.

“For now, let’s keep visiting the hospital and monitor the progress···”

Mother still did not listen to the doctor’s story until the end.

“Nae-yeong. Let’s go.”

Mother stood up abruptly, took Geum Nae-yeong’s hand, and left the treatment room. And she did not schedule the next appointment either.

After leaving the hospital and walking for a long time. Mother opened her tightly closed mouth.

“Where does a quack get off talking down to someone else’s son. Doctors are all just merchants anyway···”

At Mother’s words, Nae-yeong, who had no expression, muttered quietly to himself.

“The doctor’s skill is not bad··· but his explanation ability is poor.”

***

After that violence incident.

Someone called me a ‘real psychopath’, and someone called me a ‘monster genius’.

Books were finished once I saw them. What I read once was never erased, as if engraved in the infinite space of my brain.

Exams were always perfect marks. My grades, which used to hover near the top, turned into an unrivaled first place in the entire school, and after becoming an adult, I could even zoom in on a passing scene to read the letters.

However··· along with that, the whispering voice in my ear also grew louder. At some point, it became me.

Like what some guy said, I had an ‘awakening’. In return, I lost a portion of my emotions.

A genius humanities student who stripped away emotions. The profession that suited me was clear.

A lawyer.

A profession that could defend a murderer or an innocent person alike.

A cold and rational profession that had no interest in my mental world.

To make their late-born son a lawyer, Father worked as a wallpaper hanger and Mother worked at a restaurant, supporting him diligently.

And having become a lawyer, I got a job at Nine, a top domestic law firm. Although it had only been a few months, it was a position where I could successfully receive a six-figure salary plus bonuses.

Once I got a bit more established, my parents would no longer need to do wallpapering and restaurant work. A peaceful daily life was anticipated.

Until the coin scam occurred.

So currently, like this.

Geum Nae-yeong and Father were on their way back home, barely carrying a single 30-inch monitor recovered from the illegal coin company.

“Nae-yeong··· I’m sorry. Father···”

In the voice of Father, who hung his head, regret and self-reproach were mixed.

However, Geum Nae-yeong spoke with a face that showed absolutely no emotional change.

“No. This kind of thing is also an experience. I’ll take care of the bank loan interest.”

Having brought the disheartened Father back home like that, I installed the coin application Father mentioned and logged in with Father’s ID.

Still in Father’s account. Balance: 2 billion.

“···I can’t help but laugh hollowly.”

Click.

Throwing the phone to one side, I leaned my body against the sofa and closed my eyes.

I thought of a way to break through the situation.

“Right now, the bank interest is also tight. Money to live on. First, I need to have that.”

If so··· what is the method? Fast, simple, with low physical exertion.

A case that can be ended without dragging it to trial. Yet, a field where demand overflows.

The answer was set.

“Starting with divorce cases.”

The corners of my mouth went up slightly.

“Let’s go with high volume and low margin.”