FADE Chapter 2: A Month Without Her Voice | Drama Web Novel

 

I

Day One.

He didn't return to the palace.

Min-joon said there was an emergency cabinet meeting in the morning, that the press had begun circulating news of the accident, and that the official statement could no longer be delayed. He said it in a calm, professional voice, the manner he had learned over years of working with a man who accepted nothing but facts, stripped of any softening.

Joon looked at him over a cup of coffee he hadn't touched.

- "How long will the statement take?"

- "Ten minutes. Maybe fifteen."

- "Fine."

- "And the meeting..."

- "I will be there at nine. And back here by ten."

Min-joon opened his mouth, then closed it. There was nothing left to say. Joon Kim was a president before he was a husband, and he knew that. But the man sitting before him now in the hospital lobby, in a rumpled wedding suit, with a bruise on his forehead and eyes hollow from lack of sleep, did not look quite like either image.

- "Sir," he finally said in a low voice. "You haven't slept."

- "I know."

- "At least..."

- "Min-joon."

- "Yes, sir."

- "Get me another coffee. This one has gone cold."

The official statement took eight minutes.

Joon stood before the microphones with a controlled, unreadable expression. He stated that Mrs. Jina Park had been involved in an accident within the perimeter of the Presidential Palace, that she was receiving the necessary medical care, that her condition was stable, and that he requested the media to respect their privacy at this time.

He didn't say she was in a coma.

He didn't say he didn't know when she would wake up.

He didn't say that when he stood before the bathroom mirror an hour ago to change into a clean suit, he had stood frozen for three minutes because his hand was trembling as he tried to button his shirt.

He only said: Her condition is stable. And stepped down from the podium.

II

Day Three.

Jina's mother arrived from Busan.

A woman in her sixties with dyed black hair and her daughter's exact eyes, she entered the room, stood before the bed, and didn't say a word for two full minutes. Joon sat in the chair by the window, watching her.

Then she turned to him.

- "Have you been here the entire time?"

- "Most of it."

She looked at the dark circles under his eyes, then down at his hand, which rested next to Jina's on the blanket.

- "Go sleep," she said in a tone that brooked no argument. "I'm here."

- "I'm fine..."

- "I didn't ask if you were fine. I told you to go sleep."

Joon paused.

And for the first time in three days, he smiled. A tiny, faint ghost of a smile, barely visible, but it was there.

- "She treats me that way too," he said.

The mother looked at him, something shifting in her eyes.

- "I know. She treats me that way too."

He slept for four hours in a room adjacent to the suite, provided by the hospital.

It wasn't real sleep. It was something closer to an absence; his body closed its eyes, but his mind refused to quiet down. Images of the day crossed his thoughts in a completely illogical order: the screech of tires, the sunlight glinting on her dress, her unfinished sentence, and the stark whiteness of the room.

When he woke up, it was two in the afternoon, and the first thing he did was get up and head to her room.

The mother was still there. She looked at him as he entered but said nothing. She left the chair for him and sat in the corner.

He sat down.

He placed his hand next to Jina's, as was his custom.

And the room fell silent, save for the rhythmic hum of the machines.

III

Day Seven.

At the end of a long meeting, the Prime Minister asked him in a cautious, tentative voice:

- "Mr. President, do you think Mrs. Jina's health condition might affect..."

- "No," Joon said before the man could finish the sentence.

The Prime Minister fell silent.

- "I mean," he pressed on carefully, "there are decisions that require..."

- "The decisions will be made in due time. Anything else?"

There was no anger in Joon's voice. There was no threat. There was something heavier than that, something that made the Prime Minister gather his papers, say "Nothing else," and conclude the meeting.

Joon walked out into the corridor and pulled out his phone.

There was a message from Min-joon stating that the budget file signing was scheduled in an hour.

Beneath it was a text from the attending physician, stating that the condition remained stable with no change.

Stable. The word had come to mean "neither good news nor bad." He loathed the word more and more each time he heard it.

He replied to Min-joon: "I'll be there." He replied to the doctor: "Thank you."

He slipped the phone back into his pocket and kept walking.

Day Nine.

A specialist in coma cases arrived from Seoul with a team. They examined Jina for two hours while Joon waited outside the room.

When they emerged, the specialist said:

- "Her body is recovering well. The injury is improving gradually. This is a very positive sign."

- "When will she wake up?"

- "We cannot..."

- "I know you cannot give a precise date. But in cases identical to hers specifically, what is the most likely timeframe?"

The doctor looked at his file.

- "Between two to six weeks. But every case is different."

- "And when she wakes up, what are the possibilities?"

The doctor paused again.

- "Full recovery is highly probable. However, you must be aware that there is a possibility of some effects, perhaps temporary, on memory or certain cognitive functions. But this is not certain."

Memory.

The word didn't stick in his mind back then. It was just one of many medical terms in a long sentence.

He didn't realize until the final night just how important it was.

IV

Day Twelve.

In the evening, when the room was clear of nurses and doctors, and Jina's mother had gone out for dinner, Joon sat down, pulled out his phone, and opened his photo library.

There were so many photos of her. More than he had realized.

It wasn't his habit to take many pictures, but it seemed his hand would hold the phone entirely on its own whenever she was in the frame.

A picture of her laughing in a small restaurant in Gangnam that she had chosen because it "felt normal, not presidential." She was eating ramen with an adorable voracity, pretending not to notice that the other customers were taking photos of them.

A picture of her asleep in the car on the way back from an official visit to Busan. Her hair was splayed across the seat, her mouth half-open, looking completely like a child.

A picture of her standing before a painting in a museum, reading the description with exaggerated seriousness, while he stood in the background watching her instead of the art.

A picture of her angry. She had come to meet him at the palace for the first time after their official engagement announcement, furious at the cold, formal way the aides treated her. She had stood before him and said in a steady voice, "These people treat me like a piece of furniture that needs to be placed in the right spot." He had snapped the picture before replying because her face at that moment was beautiful in a way he couldn't quite explain.

He closed his phone.

And looked at her.

- "You were angry with me that day too," he said into the silence. "You said I should have been there to introduce you to the aides myself. And you were right."

Silence.

- "You said a lot of things that you were right about. And I didn't say that to you enough."

V

Day Fifteen.

The press began asking more detailed questions. Was the coma real or just a precautionary measure? Would she make a full recovery? Would this affect the presidential schedule? And who was responsible for the accident?

The Presidential Office issued a second statement, confirming that the investigation was underway and details would be announced in due time.

Joon didn't read any of the media coverage.

He had asked Min-joon since day one not to bring him any of it. When Min-joon asked if he wanted to at least stay informed about public opinion, Joon looked at him and said:

- "Public opinion won't make her wake up any faster. Is there anything else?"

Min-joon never brought him any coverage after that.

That night, a new nurse arrived for the shift, a young girl who hadn't seen him before. She entered the room to check the monitors, found him sitting there as usual, froze for a moment in surprise, then composed herself.

She looked between him and Jina in a way that made him realize she didn't recognize who he was.

- "Are you family?" she asked in a timid voice.

- "Yes."

He said no more. And she didn't ask further.

But as she left, she paused at the door and said without turning around:

- "People who love like this... are rare."

And she closed the door behind her.

Joon was left alone with the steady hum of the machines and that sentence, unprompted and unexpected.

VI

Day Twenty.

Jina's mother decided to speak with him frankly.

They were in the corridor; he was drinking coffee, and she was holding a cup of tea. The hallway was nearly deserted at that late hour of the night.

- "Joon," she addressed him directly by name for the first time. No "Mr. President," no formality.

He raised his eyes.

- "She wasn't sure at first," the mother said, looking down at her cup. "When she first told me about the two of you. She kept saying, 'He is a good man, but I don't know if I truly know him.'"

- "I know," Joon said.

- "You know?"

- "She told me. She said she needed time to understand the difference between the man the world sees and the man he is when no one is watching."

The mother fell silent for a moment.

- "And did you show her?"

- "I tried."

- "And the result?"

Joon smiled a faint, sad smile.

- "She said she was starting to see the difference."

The mother looked at him, warmth softening her eyes.

- "She doesn't say that to many people. She doesn't trust easily."

- "I know."

- "Which means you did something right."

Joon turned his gaze toward the closed door of her room.

- "Or that she was just about to decide so, and now I am waiting to find out if she will give me a second chance to prove it."

VII

Day Twenty-Three.

The first moment resembling joy occurred that day.

Jina's hand had moved.

It wasn't a large movement. Just her fingers, tightening slightly for a fraction of a second before relaxing. But Joon's hand was next to hers at that exact moment, and he felt the movement before he saw it.

He called the doctor immediately.

The doctor explained that this was natural and could happen occasionally during certain stages, and that it did not necessarily mean she was about to wake up.

But when Joon returned and sat in his chair, there was something in his chest that hadn't been there for twenty-three days.

Something resembling air.

- "I heard you," he said in a low voice that no one else could hear. "I know you heard me."

Day Twenty-Five.

He was reading to her.

It started by accident. He was reviewing a file on his tablet beside her, a draft education law he had been working on for months, and found himself reading the paragraphs aloud instead of silently.

Then he stopped, realizing what he was doing.

Then he decided to continue.

- "Article Seven," he said in the same tone he used in official meetings. "The Ministry of Education is committed to providing subsidized curricula for..."

He paused.

- "I know this isn't the most exciting thing in the world. But I remember you once said you liked hearing my voice when I talk about my work. You said it changes. It becomes more... present. That was the word you used."

He fell silent for a moment.

- "I still don't completely understand what you meant. But I am trying to let you hear it."

VIII

Day Twenty-Eight.

His younger brother called him from abroad.

Joon and his brother weren't close in the conventional sense; their distant lives made their communications rare and usually brief. But when he heard his brother's voice that evening, there was something different in it.

- "How are you?" the brother asked him directly.

- "I'm fine."

- "Don't lie."

Joon paused.

- "I'm not entirely fine. But I'm dealing with it."

- "Dealing with it. That's been your favorite phrase since childhood."

- "Because it works."

- "Joon."

- "Yes."

- "She will wake up."

There was nothing in his brother's voice to make the sentence different from any standard words of encouragement. Yet something in the way he said it, simply, without any embellishment, made it land differently.

- "I know," Joon said.

- "And when she wakes up, tell her I finally approve of the marriage. I was late in sending my congratulations."

Joon laughed. A short, genuine laugh that he hadn't let out in a very long time.

- "I'll tell her."

IX

Day Twenty-Nine.

Late at night, when the hospital was at its quietest and Joon sat as he always did, he said something to her he hadn't intended to utter aloud.

- "I am afraid."

The words came out quietly. Without introduction, without explanation.

- "I haven't been afraid of many things in my life. I learned that fear doesn't alter outcomes and the energy spent on it is wasted. But the past thirty days have taught me something I didn't know."

He paused.

- "The real fear isn't of loss. It's the thought that you might wake up, and I won't know how to be the person you need. The entire time you've been here, I've been thinking about what I would say when you open your eyes. I prepared so many words. But when I thought about it more, I realized that words aren't what matter."

He looked at her hand.

- "What matters is that I am there. Just that I am there."

The room fell silent.

The machines continued their steady, rhythmic hum.

X

Day Thirty.

The morning was cold, and daylight filtered through the curtains in slanted, golden beams.

Joon was sitting, just as he had every day, but his eyes this morning were heavier than usual. He had worked until two in the morning, then come straight here, catching two hours of sleep in the chair, a sleep that could hardly be called sleep.

He was reviewing something on his phone when he noticed it.

A movement.

He raised his eyes.

Her eyelids were fluttering.

Slowly, as if every movement cost her an immense effort, they began to open.

Joon set his phone aside and leaned forward, his heart pounding in a way he hadn't felt in thirty days.

She opened her eyes.

She stared at the ceiling without moving.

Then slowly, with that same grueling slowness, she turned her head.

And she saw Joon.

And he saw her.

And he saw in her eyes exactly what he had feared since the day the doctor had mentioned it with calm, professional detachment: "There is a possibility of some effects on memory."

He had hoped it wouldn't be so.

He had hoped with everything inside him that it wouldn't be so.

- "Who are you?" she asked, her voice raspy and faint, as though she hadn't used it in a very long time.

It was as if the entire thirty days were compressed into those three words.

Joon swallowed hard.

And said, his voice on the verge of cracking:

- "I'm Joon."

She looked at him with a blank, white gaze that held nothing.

- "I don't know you."

And that was the moment.

The moment that could break a man.

But Joon Kim did not break.

He decided, instead, on something else.

He decided to start from scratch.

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