Chapter 167: Hospital Visit (1)
“I’m sorry? A... car accident?”
Kang Ra-Eun thought she had heard wrong. She realized that she was talking to a nurse.
“How badly is that guy— I mean, my oppa hurt?”
- We won’t know for sure until he gets a thorough medical checkup done, but I was told that his left leg was slightly fractured.
A leg fracture was by no means a light accident
“Could you tell me the hospital address?”
- Just a moment, please.
Ra-Eun put on a jacket as the nurse gave her the address. She came out of her room the moment the call ended and Seo Yi-Seo tilted her head in confusion.
“Are you going out?” she asked.
“Yeah. Something happened.”
“What happened?”
Ra-Eun pondered for a moment whether to tell Yi-Seo or not, but she didn’t feel the need to keep something like this a secret to her best friend.
“Oppa got hurt,” Ra-Eun remarked.
“By oppa, do you mean... Ra-Hyuk oppa?”
“Yeah.”
“H-How badly was he hurt?”
Yi-Seo was far more shocked than Ra-Eun.
“He suffered a slight fracture, so I got a call from the hospital.”
“Oh my God, what could have happened...?”
“I’m not sure. I’ll find out once I’m there.”
No matter how hard Ra-Eun was on Ra-Hyuk, she was nowhere near cold-hearted enough to treat his hospitalization lightly.
“In any case, I’ll drop by the hospital for a bit,” Ra-Eun said.
“Ra-Eun! I’m coming too. I should at least check how he’s doing.”
Yi-Seo couldn’t help but worry about Ra-Hyuk, since they had known each other for so long. Not only that, Yi-Seo was far more sentimental than Ra-Eun. Ra-Eun judged that it would be better for Yi-Seo to join her than going alone, so she agreed. She clicked her tongue in her head as she waited at the front door for Yi-Seo to finish getting ready.
‘Why a car accident out of the blue?’
She couldn’t help but be worried since they were family.
***
Ra-Eun and Yi-Seo arrived at the hospital that Ra-Hyuk had been admitted to. Ra-Eun had been in such a hurry that she had not brought her mask nor sunglasses. People recognized her immediately despite not having any make-up on.
Most female celebrities mustered up a lot of courage to reveal their bare face, but Ra-Eun did not particularly mind. Her beauty was top-tier with or without make-up, and she was more comfortable without make-up on.
Ra-Eun went up to a nurse at the front desk with Yi-Seo.
“Hello. I’m here for a patient named Kang Ra-Hyuk.”
The nurse was shocked as soon as she saw Ra-Eun.
“C-Could you be Miss Kang Ra-Eun?”
“Yes, that’s right.”
Ra-Eun could tell from the nurse’s voice that she had been the one that Ra-Eun had talked to on the phone. The nurse seemed to have no idea that the person she had talked to on the phone had been Ra-Eun.
“I never even dreamed that patient Kang Ra-Hyuk’s little sister would be you, Miss Kang!”
“Really? What name does my oppa have my number saved as?”
Ra-Eun wondered if it had just been something like ‘little sister,’ but it had not been so simple.
“Umm... It was saved as ‘My cutie pie little sis.’”
“...”
Ra-Eun’s mind was storming with thoughts regarding whether to kill Ra-Hyuk or not, but she decided to endure it for now since he was injured.
The nurse mentioned with a smile, “Your brother must love you very much.”
“It sure seems so,” Ra-Eun answered.
However, that love couldn’t be any more disgusting to Ra-Eun. She filled out all the necessary forms required for a guardian to do as the nurse instructed, and went with Yi-Seo to the hospital room that Ra-Hyuk was in.
“Room 307. Here it is, Miss Kang.”
Slide.
As soon as Ra-Eun opened the door, the first thing she saw was Ra-Hyuk laughing while looking at his smartphone. He belatedly noticed that Ra-Eun and Yi-Seo had come to visit him, and pretended to cough while hiding his smartphone.
“Argh, my head...” Ra-Hyuk groaned.
Ra-Eun expressed in bafflement as Ra-Hyuk pretended to be hurting, “Why is a person who hurt his leg saying his head hurts?” she asked.
“Because my head also hurts.”
“Bullshit. I saw you snickering while staring at your smartphone.”
“...You saw that?”
“Yeah, I did.”
It was better not to lie about something that would be found out quickly, since one could be scolded for something that they wouldn’t have been scolded for.
Unlike Ra-Eun, who was nagging Ra-Hyuk as soon as she arrived, Yi-Seo asked him in worry, “How’s your leg, oppa? Is it okay?”
“Yeah. It’s just a little fracture. The nurse told me that she called you, Ra-Eun.”
The nurse had called Ra-Eun while Ra-Hyuk was getting his check-up done. Their father had been unavailable because he was in the middle of work, so Ra-Eun had come in his place. Ra-Hyuk felt sorry to make his busy little sister come all the way here because of him.
“I just need to spend a few days in the hospital, and then I’ll be discharged. It’s nothing, really.”
“Nothing, my ass,” Ra-Eun continued her nagging. “How can you even say that when your leg is in a cast and covered in bandages?”
Ra-Hyuk simply laughed awkwardly in response to his little sister’s sharp retort.
.
“How did this even happen?” Ra-Eun asked.
Considering Ra-Hyuk’s personality, he wouldn’t have caused a car accident while driving. Unlike Ra-Eun, he was an extreme advocate of safe driving. There were times when Ra-Eun felt extremely frustrated with how safely he drove. Ra-Hyuk always drove in a laid-back manner, even when Ra-Eun showed him the exact times when he could switch lanes.
Hence, it was hard to believe that Ra-Hyuk had caused a car accident. But of course, car accidents weren’t something that could be prevented with just oneself being careful. No matter how safe one’s driving was, a car accident could always occur due to someone else’s carelessness.
Ra-Eun believed that to be the cause of this accident, and her expectation had been spot on.
“The other car suddenly drove over the centerline and rammed into my car,” Ra-Hyuk expressed.
“They drove over the centerline?”
“Yeah. And the driver didn’t seem to be in his right mind once I checked up on him after the incident. The police did an alcohol test on him once they arrived, and he was confirmed to be driving under the influence.”
A DUI, and driving over the centerline.
‘What an absolute mess.’
The situation was the definition of a clusterfuck.
“Then I expect the incident turned out to be 100% the other person’s fault, right?” Ra-Eun asked.
“Well, yeah. But he asked me if I was willing to reach a settlement, and I’m thinking about saying yes.”
Ra-Eun’s smooth forehead wrinkled at the mention of settlement.
“Why would you settle with that crazy son of a bitch?”
“But...” Ra-Hyuk slurred.
He seemed to have a different reason for thinking about agreeing to the settlement.
“What? Tell me,” Ra-Eun said.
Ra-Hyuk was hesitating to speak despite Ra-Eun’s strong coercion. She decided to pressure him a little more.
“You don’t wanna say? Fine. I guess we’ll never be seeing each other again, then.”
Ra-Hyuk loved his little sister very much, to the point that he would save her in his contacts as ‘My cutie pie little sis.’ He couldn’t be any more shocked to hear his little sister say such a thing.
He ultimately opened up. “Because it might damage your reputation if I don’t agree to the settlement.”
“What the hell does that mean?”
“Well, the other driver might spread hate all over the internet with comments like ‘I got into a car accident with a certain celebrity’s older brother and he wouldn’t come to a settlement with me. What a douchebag.’”
Instances like that did indeed happen. There were people who wanted celebrities to be considerate simply because of the fact that they were famous and earned tons of money. However, this and that were completely unrelated.
Ra-Eun answered bluntly, “Tell him to go fuck himself. Celebrities aren’t angels. We don’t have wings on our backs or a halo on top of our heads. Why should we just forgive any absurdity that happens to us? Huh?”
Ra-Hyuk couldn’t refute Ra-Eun’s barrage of logic. The public’s desire for celebrities to be virtuous puts a lot of stress and pressure on the celebrities themselves. Ra-Eun did not become a celebrity to deal with crap like this.
“Don’t worry about stuff like that and see it through to the end. Don’t let him off easy, and get everything you can out of him. Only then will he get his shit together and never do something like drinking and driving ever again.”
It was natural for one to be punished for their own crimes. Ra-Hyuk couldn’t refute Ra-Eun’s words since they were true, but he was still worried nonetheless.
“Will you really be okay?” he asked.
“You don’t have to worry about me. If you have that kind of time, then use it to take care of yourself. Just look at you. You’re unsightly enough being so scrawny, but those bandages make it even worse.”
Ra-Eun’s words were rough, but they were filled with worry for her older brother. Ra-Hyuk smiled.
“Thanks, Ra-Eun.”
“For what?”
“For everything, I guess.”
Ra-Eun’s face slightly reddened from how sincere Ra-Hyuk was suddenly being.
“Did you actually hurt your head too? You’re being so weird.”
“Look at you, getting embarrassed.”
“Who’s embarrassed?! Don’t make me break your other leg!”
Yi-Seo unconsciously smiled just from listening to the two siblings in silence.
***
Three days have passed since Ra-Hyuk’s hospital admittance. Ra-Eun saw a confusing sight after coming back to check up on her older brother.
“What’s all this?”
Tons of things were stacked on one corner of the hospital room. As soon as Ra-Hyuk saw her, he whined as if he had been waiting to do so.
“Please, Ra-Eun. Do something about this.”
“Do something about what?”
“About all those.”
Ra-Hyuk explained to her about everything that had happened in the last three days.
“You know the article that was published about me getting admitted to the hospital because of a car accident, right?”
“Yeah.”
An article about Kang Ra-Eun’s older brother having gotten into a car accident had been published on Ra-Hyuk’s first day of admittance. That had been the trigger.
“Your acquaintances have been coming to visit me so much that I have no time to rest.”
Ra-Eun’s high school friends, Rita, Han Ga-Ae, Ji Han-Seok, Je-Woon, Tae-Chan, people from her agency, and many others.
“They’ve practically been coming for visits at five-minute intervals like they’d made a schedule. I can’t even rest. Even a congresswoman sent me a gift.”
“Oh, it must have been Congresswoman Hong Oh-Yeon.”
Ra-Hyuk was suffering from his little sister’s popularity.
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