Jihyun wakes up forty minutes after her arrival. He blinks and, slowly, looks around. Min-ji stands up from her bed and walks up to him.
"Jihyun." She whispers. She does not have enough strength to speak any louder.
His mouth opens in a perfectly shaped O, and she notices a small bruise on his upper lip.
"Min-ji…" He whispers back, his voice hoarse and pained. "Why are you here?"
She motions to grab his hand under the blanket, but here is only what feels like a stump. She squeezes it anyway.
"I'm still your emergency contact." She reminds him.
"Oh…" He says, then sighs. "I forgot about it."
The revelation does not surprise her, seeing that they thought of calling her in the first place. It is easy to assume that he did not have anyone else to replace her with and knowing that he would not like to bother anyone with it. It was her who put her number there, after all, after much insistence on her part and under the promise that she would call his now-deceased father as soon as possible instead, should anything come to pass.
"I'm... I'm sorry." He apologises, unable to meet her eyes in deep shame.
She shakes her head, smiling sadly.
"I am not." She says gently but firmly. "I only regret that it took this for us to finally talk."
Min-ji runs a thumb over the stump. So many questions run through her mind, but one in particular takes precedent over anything else.
"What happened?" She asks in a heartbeat.
The man swallows hard. "What have you been told so far?"
She repeats what Nurse Park informed her.
"Did you really try to kill yourself?" The brunette woman asks in the end, with the quietest tone she can do without silencing altogether.
Jihyun looks at the window, then at ceiling.
"It's a long story." He replies, just slightly louder. "But yes."
She feels her lips tremble. Her grip on the stump gets harder.
"I have time for a long story."
"Then you should grab that chair over there." He points with his chin. "It is a long story."
By the time Nurse Park comes for more medication and Jihyun ends up falling back asleep, Min-ji knows that, one, he summarized most of his tale and, two, it is fucked up regardless.
She purposefully did not check on news about the Han case after he left, so she would not feel hurt over it, and Zen was wise enough to not share anything he might have learned anymore. Actually, their friendship never fully recovered afterwards. It took a whole year for him to apologize for his harsh words that day, and they lost much of their shared time together after Min-ji left the company, and then the city.
Anyway, as she did not keep up with Jihyun's twisted family situation, it came as news to her that Rika and Jumin were found guilty of their respective crimes and imprisoned for them. His best friend was supposed to stay in prison for ten years, but was found dead in ten days. Min-ji knows, since college, that patricide and sexual crimes do not go 'unpunished' in prison, as traditional prisoner's 'honour code'. It just did not occur to her that it was valid beyond the lower dregs of society, especially when it comes an intern so well-surveyed such as the then sole owner of the Han fortune.
Having gotten a life sentence without parole, Rika is rotting in a female-only prison in Daegu. After her accomplice's murder, security around her was tightened, and so she rarely interacts with anyone other than the correctional officers charged with her. That is all Jihyun said about her, but she has a feeling there is a lot to found out about that.
Lucy and Taemin live in a penthouse in Gangnam with Jumin's trustee, a woman named Jaehee Kang. Jihyun tried to get custody, but he had made a last promise to his deceased friend, that he would not expose the children to more ridicule and scrutiny by claiming paternity of them, assuring that no-one would ever dispute their filiation to the Han family. Therefore, without admitting he was their biological father, he was unable to convince the family judge to not send them away from Incheon.
The trials took their toll on his father's failing health, and Mr. Kim died of a heart attack while on the toilet. Since he lived alone, he was found by the housekeeper in the morning after.
As if to have the last laugh, Jihyun found out he lied when he declared to have disinherited him after he moved to Jongno to work on that entertainment firm, which the old man claimed it was a rival of his. He did not tell how much of the company he owns now, but she can guess that it probably most, if not all, of the shares fell under his purview, seeing he was an only child.
Carolyn Han is far off the map, living in a quiet retreat in the mountains. She only showed up at the funeral for her wayward son, pointing out in a quiet and menacing way she excels at that she knew of the muddled paternity of her ex-husband's proclaimed children, but that she does not ever intend to dispute the cursed spoils. Min-ji had the distinct impression that the old woman suspected, like most of Korea, that either of them could be her grandchild, if not both.
Every other family member was too busy with their own issues, not all of them caused by his father, ex-lover and best friend, so he kept to himself.
She asked about his hand, and he said it was a car accident, but he could not elaborate, as it was then that Park entered.
As much as she paid attention to his words, she also watched the way he gazed at her. The medications left him slightly misty-eyed, but she still recognized the look he bestowed her. The same look he reserved for her in their three years together.
