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She tried desperately to pry his hand away, but all she got in return was a face set with grim determination. Of course, she knew that Go Seok-hyun understood her limits better than she did. That was likely why the hospital insisted she was doing well, even while she felt a pain so intense it felt as if she were being broken and torn apart.
But he didn't know how agonizing and painful this was. That was why he could push her so mechanically. Because these weren't his fingers. Because this pain didn't belong to him.
The fear that her ligaments were tearing spread from her fingertips throughout her entire body. Twisting her body, Hee-jin desperately slapped his arm and pushed at his shoulder. When he still wouldn't let go, she pushed his chin away entirely.
With a simple tilt of his head, Seok-hyun avoided Hee-jin's right hand and brought her injured left hand toward his own head. Looking straight into her eyes, which were filled with a question of what on earth he was doing, he spoke.
“Grip and push with this hand. Are you afraid of using your left hand?”
Hee-jin's eyes trembled violently as she looked back and forth between Seok-hyun's face, now inches away, and her own hand. She could manage to make a slight fist, but gripping something was a different matter. Just imagining it brought back the pain, and she couldn't bring herself to clutch his hair.
“What... what do you know...?”
Afraid of using her left hand? Of course she was. The fear of what might go wrong coexisted with the desire to avoid the pain.
Go Seok-hyun seemed truly insane. No, the entire situation could only be described as madness. The person who needed rehabilitation more desperately than anyone was crying, wanting to stop, while the perpetrator spoke of hope while inflicting pain as if he were a savior.
“You keep showing your weak side, but I'm sure you don't actually want to quit...”
As Hee-jin failed to grab his hair and only let tears fall, a cruel smile played on the corners of Seok-hyun's lips.
“Perhaps you just want to lean on me?”
At those words, Hee-jin shuddered as if struck by lightning. She wanted to scream that he was talking nonsense, but the words she couldn't utter got stuck in her throat. Instead, a confusion bloomed within her, as if something had twisted inside.
She wondered if she had gone mad from the pain, or if she truly wanted to lean on him as Go Seok-hyun suggested; the confusion made her head spin.
She wanted to deny his words. Forcing herself to ignore the greater fear piercing her chest, Hee-jin grit her teeth and clenched her hand. The sensation of the hair bending within her palm was chilling. A weak grip wasn't enough to catch the hair. She had to apply much more strength to pull the scalp.
“Ugh...”
As Seok-hyun watched Hee-jin's expression distort from enduring the pain, the front of his trousers bulged. Since he was pressed against her to keep her body still, Hee-jin had no choice but to feel that heaviness. However, neither of them mentioned it.
When Hee-jin finally succeeded in pulling his hair, a satisfied smile appeared on Seok-hyun's lips. Feeling a slight thrill at her success, Hee-jin belatedly felt a surge of disgust and hurriedly pulled her hand away.
“Good girl. I'll wipe the moisture off.”
Her hand was already dry, but without exception, Seok-hyun began to wipe each finger one by one. Even as she felt his touch, Hee-jin wanted to shut him out. Yet, she had already grown accustomed to the way he delicately wiped each finger.
The stitches remaining where the pins had been were now so familiar that they felt like a ring or a tattoo. Perhaps because of an instinctive rejection of them, she once dreamed of going on stage without having the stitches removed. In the dream, she was holding the Lord Wilton, but her fingers wouldn't move at all. It was the first time she had had such a terrible nightmare.
“It's definitely stiffest in the morning.”
When she woke up in the morning, the fingers that had stiffened overnight were hard, like logs with no blood flow. Perhaps that was why the pain of rehabilitation was most severe in the morning. Receiving Seok-hyun's massage—which was so skilled he could pass for a therapist—Hee-jin let her frayed nerves settle and closed her eyes for a moment. While her mind was filled with the desire to get away from him immediately, she couldn't deny the physical sense of stability she felt leaning on him.
Because of this, she couldn't refute his question about whether she wanted to lean on him. Go Seok-hyun's words shook Hee-jin's already unstable psyche. As the moments she leaned on him increased, she wanted to recoil in disgust, but in reality, she couldn't even shake off that emotion properly.
After Seok-hyun left for work, Hee-jin, left alone, went up to the second floor and sat still, looking like someone who had lost their soul. Since every second was precious, she had determined to spend her spare time studying music, but the sheet music wouldn't enter her eyes at all.
She was slowly going crazy. Hee-jin vaguely felt that she was not in a normal state of mind. She didn't even know where her phone was—which had been powered off for a long time—nor did she care.
“Phew... it's too loud.”
The master class video she had played for her studies continued to run, but her head hurt so much that it sounded irritating. She went downstairs to look for painkillers. Just as she was about to put a pill in her mouth without water, Hee-jin stopped upon seeing the Lord Wilton displayed in the center of the living room.
“Haa...”
Go Seok-hyun had provided a glass display case and exhibited the Lord Wilton inside. As if to tell her to constantly imagine the moment she would play it again. To give her the strength to run toward that goal.
Standing still and gazing at the violin, Hee-jin's eyes looked precarious, as if they might extinguish at any moment. Seok-hyun had registered her fingerprint so she could take it out whenever she wanted, but far from opening the glass door, Hee-jin felt like she would go mad just by looking at it.
While telling her not to be impatient, Go Seok-hyun had created an environment where she couldn't help but be impatient. To just watch this violin for three, or five years? It was a form of whipping that only a devil would conceive.
Hee-jin struggled to swallow her surging emotions and took a deep breath. Once, twice... Only after calming her breathing dozens of times was she finally able to brace herself to open the glass door.
Her hand trembled violently as she opened the door and took out the violin. Fearing she might drop it, she carefully removed the violin with her healthy hand, and her heart became even more conflicted. The emotion of when she had played this violin and the shock of when Go Seok-hyun had brought it as a gift were intertwined.
After taking dozens more deep breaths, Hee-jin slowly assumed her posture. Her body, which had been twisted or slumped recently from writhing in pain, instinctively straightened. Remembering the posture etched into her muscles, she accepted the violin as a part of her body.
She knew that even if she only used her uninjured fingers, it could still put a strain on her entire hand. Nevertheless, just by tucking the violin between her jaw and shoulder, Hee-jin was overcome with a thrill.
She felt the illusion that her fingers had returned to normal. She felt as if she could play a Paganini Caprice right now. Gritting her teeth to escape the vain delusion, she placed her uninjured pinky finger on the A string and drew the bow. An elegant sound echoed through the silent house.
It was only a single note. But the moment that one note rang out, a storm of emotion surged in her heart. A thrill that felt as if her chest would burst started from her fingertips and shook her entire body, and an unprecedented pain and beauty rushed in together.
Though it was but a single note, the resonance was so familiar yet so raw that Hee-jin felt as if her breath had stopped. Something hot filled her throat, and tears welled up uncontrollably. Realizing anew how distant and yet how close this sound—which had been a part of her life—now was, the hope and fear buried deep in her heart reared their heads all at once, blurring her vision.
Even so, Hee-jin could not take her eyes off the violin. Just one note... There had never been a moment in her life that felt more desperate and precious than this. This one note told her clearly what she had lost. The fact that the sound which had been so natural was now distantly far away. The pain and patience she would have to endure to reclaim this sound felt overwhelmingly heavy.
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