2599-chapter-4
This is no ordinary man. He is the type of man who has captured people. Won would have no qualms about putting him in prison.
Nietzsche once said, “When you stare into the abyss, the abyss stares back at you.” Top Dog was looking at her, too, and as she realized it and backed away, a smile spread across his lips.
‘What is he doing? Why is he smiling?’
While she was puzzling over her questions, Top Dog put the thumb and forefinger of his left hand together to form a circle.
‘Money?’
Won frowned slightly at the unintelligible gesture. Top Dog stuck the index and middle fingers of his right hand into the hole. Then, with a deep, deep reciprocating1 he’s making the hand gesture for sex; like the peepee going into the hooha motion…
Top Dog chuckled as Won made an openly disgusted face.
‘Crazy asshole.’
Won’s mood, which was already sinking to the bottom because of Dr. Madison, sank even lower. Neither this one nor that one was sane enough to seem normal. No, she didn’t even know about the doctor, but the one before her is a patient, it’s no wonder he isn’t sane.
Top Dog was the polar opposite of the intelligent-looking Dr. Madison. He looked like a back-alley executive2 gang leader/ mafia man one would read about in romantic fantasies.
A dangerous man who wore black suits, smoked cigarettes, and stomped on people’s feet. The type of person who would cause chaos in your life if you got too close to him, but his charming exterior keeps attracting a steady stream of women like wealthy moths to a flame. Bad in more ways than one. Evil shouldn’t be glorified, but Won did it so easily with his vapid appearance.
Top Dog lifted his chin as if he noticed her observing him. There was something arrogant about the way he stared at her with his hand cradling the back of his head, as if he were willing her to become his servant. His gaze never left her for even a loose moment.
Won didn’t avert her gaze. As if she were eyeing her prey, she intended to teach this arrogant brute a lesson. Their staring contest continued until the nurse took Won to another location.
Won decided to make the nameless man, Top Dog, her second person of interest.
“Now that I’ve shown you around the facility, I’ll give you the schedule for the ward. You’ll wake up at 6:00 and do some exercises. You’ll have three meals: breakfast at 7:30, lunch at 12:00, and dinner at 17:30. Your medication will be taken after the meals. If you need tea, coffee, or other beverages, or a cigarette, you can come to the nurses’ station. Bedtime is at 22:00. Other than that, it’s all free time and you are free to move around the ward after wake-up and before bedtime.”
After a lengthy explanation, the nurse left, telling her to come to her if she had any other questions.
Back in her room, Won gathered her belongings and looked around.
There was another CCTV.
‘A locked ward is no place to live.’
No privacy and 24/7 surveillance. She can’t wait to complete her mission and get out of there. To do that, she needs to meet her target…
‘Where is he?’
He wasn’t in the main hall. She thought he might be locked up in one of the rooms. Maybe she just didn’t see him in the playroom or counseling room. Whatever the answer, she’ll see him at dinner. The patients had to meet in the dining hall at a set time to eat.
Won decided to take it easy and wait for the time to pass, but when she was escorted to the second-floor cafeteria by the hospital staff, there was no sign of her target.
‘What is going on? Is he skipping dinner?’
Won was puzzled by the unexpected turn of events but continued to eat. She must eat well to maintain her strength.
Again, due to the risk of self-harm, they were issued disposable plastic spoons and wooden chopsticks instead of iron utensils. It’s a shame because chopsticks and spoons are great weapons. What can you expect when even the bathroom sinks are made of hard rubber and there are acrylic mirrors?
After finishing her meal under the watchful eye of the staff, Won descended to the ground floor and wandered around the ward. It wasn’t such a strange thing to do.
There are no exercise machines in the locked ward for safety reasons, so the only exercise patients can do is calisthenics or walking. There were always one or two people walking up and down the corridors. She currently was in the “walking hallway.”
‘The main hall on the first floor is the most popular place for patients to hang out, so I’m more likely to run into the target if I wander around there.’
After several trips in the corridor, the door to the nurses’ station opened and a patient came out, assisted by two nurses. Won watched, curious, but stopped when she recognized the man’s face as he hobbled away.
He was more scruffy than in the photo, but there was no mistake. She had no choice but to recognize him. There couldn’t be another patient who looked even close to him.
K Group’s hapless heir. The prince “trapped in the tower” that she must save.
Target walked past Won and entered a hospital room. If he had gone to the second or third floor, it would have been impossible to determine his exact location, but fortunately, he was on the first floor. Won remembered the room he entered.
“I’ve never seen you before, noona3 i actually really hate when “noona” or “unnie” and stuff are translated like this, but its important for the story fyi , so you must have been hospitalized today.”
The unfamiliar voice made Won turn around. A girl in a patient’s uniform was broadly smiling.
“He came out of a 48-hour sentence.”
“48 hours?”
“48 hours in the stabilization room. 24 of them in compulsion. Compulsion means being tied up.”
There was no one else in the stabilization room when she was there. Apparently, there isn’t just one care room.
“You better be careful too, because if you piss off the nurses even a little bit, you’ll be sent there. Especially if you’re filmed, you’ll be sent to the CR for anything and it’s hard to watch. The other day, an old man was sent there because he accidentally dropped his chopsticks at mealtime and they said he made a scene. But they’re wooden chopsticks, so they barely make a sound, right noona?”
She said “noona” again. Won thought she heard incorrectly the first time, but she didn’t.
Won took a closer look at the child in front of her, wondering if she had mistaken the curly-haired boy for a girl, but it was a girl no matter how she looked at it.
‘Then why does she call me “noona” instead of “unnie”? Gender identity disorder is when the body and mind don’t match… is it that?’
Puzzled, Won continued her conversation with the girl.
“Do you know why that guy was put in the stabilization room?”
“Hyung? He tried to escape.”
“An escape attempt? He tried to get out of here?”
“Yeah. Anything over 24 hours is usually an escape attempt. From what I heard, he got through the double doors, but he didn’t make it far outside before they caught him.”
“How did he get through the gates?”
“Uh… Rumor has it that since he is a good-looking guy, he flirted with a cleaning lady from a contractor and stole her access card, but I don’t know if that’s true. Anyway, it’s great that he could at least see the outside because I haven’t seen it in about two years.”
Apparently, Target has a surprising character. Instead of waiting for someone to rescue him, he tried to escape on his own.
“What happened to you, noona? What’s your diagnosis?”
The girl asked so innocently. Won couldn’t help but feel like she was being treated like she was an elder. Won didn’t know the girl’s age and the girl didn’t know hers, but unlike Won, who is an adult, the girl was clearly a minor.
“I… I don’t know if you’ll believe me when I say this, but my family forced me to be hospitalized.”
“You too, noona? It’s always about money!”
The girl was fast to respond, and without being asked, began to share her personal history.
“My dad was a congressman and my mom was the daughter of a rich family, but then my mom died and my dad remarried, and my stepmom was nice to me when he was around. She abused me when he wasn’t around, so it’s like the standard stepmom story. Then, I found she had a son who was seven years younger than me. It turns out he was my dad’s son and they have been having an affair since my mom was alive, but then one day, out of the blue, I was kidnapped on my way home from school by some strange men and brought here. My stepmom and dad said I should be hospitalized because I was constantly abusing my little brothers, but I never did any of that.”
The girl paused, then casually shifted the conversation.
“What about you, noona?”
“I think it was a money thing.”
“Oh, money. I hear that happens a lot. I have an inheritance that my mom left me when she died. I don’t know the law, so I don’t know if my dad and stepmom can take it away from me. Maybe I can use it to pay my medical bills?”
Won didn’t know what to say. No matter what she said to this girl, who had gone from going to school to being locked up in a closed ward for two years, it would just be empty words. There was no consoling her.
The girl brightly smiled in understanding and held out her hand.
“It’s nice to meet you, unnie,” she said, “I hope we can get along as girls. There aren’t too many girls here, so I’m lonely. There are some older girls, but the age gap is too big.”
Before she knew it, the title of “noona” had casually transformed into “unnie.”
“I see.”
“Please call me Ju-hee. It’s nice talking to you.”
“I’m Won. We can talk later.”
“Okay. If you have any questions, feel free to ask me.”
Ju-hee cheerfully waved goodbye and walked away, leaving Won distraught.
“So naive.”
The sudden sarcasm made Won turn around to find Top Dog, a man at least a head taller than her, blocking her path.
“I’m not going to let a baby run her mouth like that. You know what got her hospitalized?”
He patted himself on the head and revealed the answer.
“Delusional disorder. Persecutory delusions.”
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