Chapter Text
Park Kyung-Hye does not recognize her son.
At first, it's not even related to a moral conflict or to the change in his attitude, it's just that she doesn't physically recognize him. She does not recognize the shape of his face, the color of his eyes, the softness of his gaze, the features of his jaw, the outline of his nose and the tenderness of his smile. She sees a man, and she can't recognize her son. She sees a tall, tight-faced, tight-featured man carrying far more than he should on his shoulders and she fails to see the boy her son was in him.
"Mom?” The man says, and she doesn't even recognize her son's voice.
When the man takes her in his arms, she closes her eyes and tries to pretend that it is her son she is holding close to her, so that she can reassure him and rock him as she did when he was a child, but she realizes that she doesn't recognize his scent either. She doesn’t recognize the scent of the baby she carried in her arms for months, of the child she took the hand of to guide him, of the teenager she hugged in front of his friends – and it scares her.
She doesn't know if he realizes this, if he realizes that she's not sure it's really Jin-Woo she has in front of him and not some stranger pretending to be him. He doesn't say anything if he realizes it. He just smiles at her a little, a smile she doesn't recognize and which is hidden behind the tears he doesn't stop; and she doesn’t recognize him because her son, because her Jin-Woo had never cried in front of her.
“How do you feel?” asks a doctor.
He was shaking when he entered the room and he had a hard time keeping his eyes off the man who claims to be her son for too long. He tries to look her in the eye, but he steadily deviates towards the large figure, leaning against a wall, on the other side of the room. The figure does not have the silhouette of her son – not the shape of his shoulders and hands; not the positioning of his legs and back. His breathing quickens as soon as he feels the man's eyes on him, and he does his best to focus on her, without much success.
"I'm doing well.” She answers, and she knows that physically, it's true.
(She can't tell the doctor that the figure in her room, the man claiming to be her son, frightens her; because the man looks even more terrified than she does.)
“When can she come home?” the man asks, and his icy voice makes the doctor tremble.
Jin-Woo wasn't a naughty kid – he made his kindness his strength and he was respected and loved for it. He took care of everyone in his own way and made sure to always be polite, to show that he had been raised with respect for the elders and with hope for the future. He made her proud. The man doesn't seem like a nice person. It's not a moral judgment, it's purely physical and Park Kyung-Hye was raised with respect, and she knows not to judge someone like that, but she looks at the man and she is able to tell that he looks mean; she is able to tell that this man is not a kind person.
“Oh, this is a very special situation Mr. Sung.” And she would like to tell the doctor not to call this man that, that this was how her husband was called, that this is how her son should be called, not this man. “We have many tests to do before…”
Park Kyung-Hye does not recognize the way the man tilts his head a little to the side, as if to show his incomprehension. Her son had a very particular way of letting people know that he didn't understand something – he leaned forward a little, a tiny smile on his face, his lower lip stuck between his teeth and a little embarrassed look. This man is not like that at all. He just tilts his head a little to the left, his face closed and expressionless. Her son was adorable. This man is scary.
“Is it really necessary?” The man asks.
She wants to answer that it's necessary, that she has to stay in the hospital for a few more days to pass the tests that the doctors want her to pass and to have time to get used to the physique of this man who claims to be his son. In front of her, the doctor is shaking and swallowing, and Jin-Woo was kind, so kind, so utterly kind, that he would never scare anyone by asking a single question.
“If your mother says she is fine, I imagine that no, it is not necessary.” The doctor responds and Park Kyung-Hye blames herself for saying she's fine. “If she were to feel bad, it is of course necessary to come back immediately.”
"Of course.” The man replies, arms crossed over his chest.
The doctor nods, bows to the man without daring to look him in the eye, and disappears from the hospital room. There is such silence in the bedroom that Park Kyung-Hye is able to hear the doctor in the hallways, walking so fast it is almost as if he is running, as if he is trying to put as much distance as quickly as possible between him and the room (between himself, and the man in the room. Park Kyung-Hye would like to do the same).
The man who claims to be her son smiles softly when she looks at him, and he approaches her with a delicacy that is not what Jin-Woo had. He moves like an animal, with the silence of a cat and the power of a lion, his eyes fixed on her like an eagle, ready to pounce like a fox and with a mesmerizing smile like a snake. That's not her Jin-Woo; Park Kyung-Hye isn't even sure he's human.
“Why is he afraid of you?” She just asks, when the man sits on her bed.
He runs a hand through her hair, as if to untangle it, and the touch is soft, almost too soft. He is in perfect control of the power he puts into his every move and it may be because he is afraid of killing her if he is not careful with how he moves; but her Jin-Woo, her son, her baby, would never have been able to do her any harm, didn't even hurt her when he poured boiling water on her neck. She does not want to know what this man could do if he ever wanted to.
“He seemed afraid of me?” The man (the thing?) asks and she nods. “He must just be tired. This is the first time anyone has ever woken up from eternal slumber, you know?”
She didn't know it, but she suspected that no cure had been found. The man examines her as if discovering the features of her face and there is love in his gaze, something powerful, calm for the moment but capable of easily becoming devastating. Park Kyung-Hye had a devastating love with her own parents, she doesn't want to repeat the pattern she experienced with the man who claims to be her son. She knows how things are when love is too violent.
She thought she had broken the cycle of violence when her children were born, she thought she had managed to raise her children differently from the way she had been raised. If the man is who he claims to be, then in addition to not having been there as a mother, she will not have succeeded in that.
“How did I wake up then?” She just asks.
And the man smiles again, very gently. He doesn't show his teeth when he smiles, he barely lifts his lips, and if she hadn't been watching him carefully, she wouldn't have noticed. But she looks at him and so she sees. It's a soft smile that contrasts with the violence she knows is present in his body. He gives her a quick wink.
"Who knows?”
He knows.
She realizes it immediately, in the complicit smile he tries to give her and in the amused tone he uses. He knows. He has in his possession something powerful enough to awaken someone from eternal slumber, from this supposedly incurable disease. And, oh, Park Kyung-Hye loves her son, more than anything, but she knows he would never have had the power or the connections or the money to obtain such a precious cure. Her son, her child, her baby, for all the love she has for him, would not have been able to take care of her. She knows it.
“Jin-Woo?” She calls him.
It's the first time she's called him that since she woke up and he has to realize it because the joy on his face is indescribable. The cold monster facing the doctor has completely disappeared behind this unmistakable joy, this immense happiness that fills him. Oh, Park Kyung-Hye is a cautious woman. She can play this man's game if she has to, but she's seen what's behind the facade; she knows what this thing is capable of. Her son may have grown up, her son may have changed, but her son would never have become a monster.
‘What happened?’ She wants to ask. ‘What happened to you?’ She wants to say. ‘Why did you become like that?’ She wants to question. ‘How bad have things got that I can’t even recognize my own son anymore?’ She has hundreds of questions to ask, urges to uncover the truth, to understand what happened and find out what went wrong during her absence. She wants to be able to look at the man, understand what he's been through, and be able to see her son. She wants to ask all these questions, get all the answers but seeing the flashes of violence in his eyes, she can only ask for one thing.
"Where's Jin-Ah?"