Chapter 280

“Huh?”

I looked at the boxes piled up in the corner of the room. I had no idea when I had gathered so much stuff. The good thing was, I didn’t have to move the furniture or anything like that. The employees were going to take care of that for me. I gazed at the boxes with a wistful look in my eyes.

Who knows how much I struggled to collect all that. If I told Jiyu and Yumi about my efforts, they’d probably laugh and call me childish, but I was serious. At least for this year, I planned to keep collecting steadily. Of course, I don’t know how things might change as I get older.

“Hana! Let’s go eat!”

“Okay!”

I left the boxes behind and headed outside.

—

I had no idea how the past month had flown by. I didn’t know, but I could tell the employees had been pretty busy. That’s because whenever I went to the office late at night, they were still there. They never told me why they were working overtime until 8 PM.

Originally, our office employees were the type to clock out sharp at 6 PM, but for the past month, I hadn’t seen anyone leave on time. Of course, I was happy about it. It meant I had more people to hang out with. Even if it was just one person on duty, having multiple people around was different. But today was the last day. All the employees in our office were moving out. That included me too.

“Wait, we’re really moving?”

“Yeah, Hana. That’s why we’ve been killing ourselves with overtime for the past month…”

Bora, Haru, and Maru were sprawled out in the office. Well, those three had been working the hardest. That’s because I kept showing up every evening, asking them to play with me. They must’ve had a tough time juggling work and babysitting me. I eventually caught on and stopped visiting as much.

The next day arrived. I woke up a bit late. Wearing my dinosaur pajamas, I went to the office, only to find it eerily empty, like a scammer’s office after a midnight escape. Maru was still there, tidying up something.

“Maru, where did everyone go?”

“Oh, you’re up, Hana? They all went to the new office! We have to finish packing the last of the stuff.”

“Really? So this is the last day for this office?”

“Yeah. Hana, you need to get ready too, so let’s change your clothes.”

“Ugh!”

I got caught by Maru and was forced to change my clothes. I had already been slowly moving my stuff from my room over the past month. Now, only my bed was left. And even that old bed was being replaced with a new one. The new bed had already moved into the building in Seoul before I did.

I had visited the new building in Seoul once, and it wasn’t much different from here. They used one floor of the building in the same way. There was my room, and the office was attached to it. I guess they designed it that way so I could adjust quickly.

“Hana, we have to stay outside for a bit longer. They’re still finishing up the packing.”

“Can’t I go in now…?”

“The manager said we should wait until everything’s done so you don’t get hurt while they’re moving stuff.”

“Ah, got it.”

Maru and I spent time outside. We ate, hung out at a café, and basically killed time doing nothing. I really wanted to see my room. It wasn’t like it was new or exciting since I’d been visiting often over the past month. But the facilities were better than the old building. And most importantly, I loved how close it was to the elementary school I attended.

What used to be a one-hour commute to school would now take less than 10 minutes. This was a revolution. I had been getting sick of the two-hour round trip, but now I wouldn’t have to suffer through that anymore. Plus, I could stay out late with Jiyu and Yumi.

If things got really bad, I could even send Maru home and make my way to the building on my own since it was so close. A taxi ride would get me there in under 10 minutes. I smiled contentedly at the thought of the building’s location.

After spending time outside, it was already late afternoon. Maru and I made our way to the new building to move in.

—

Kim Jeong-chil was a patient with lung cancer. He was such a heavy smoker that even others couldn’t help but shake their heads in disbelief. Some people even suspected that his hobby was smoking cigarettes.

He was there.

But he really felt the aftermath of being a heavy smoker. At the relatively young age of 40, he ended up with lung cancer. Fortunately, it was detected early, at stage 1. Even though lung cancer has a low survival rate, catching it at stage 1 boosts the survival rate to 90%.

Unless it’s something as bad as pancreatic cancer, the survival rate is pretty high if detected early. Now, Kim Jeong-chil, who had been admitted to the hospital for cancer treatment, felt his hands itching. Of course, he wasn’t a gambling addict—he didn’t even know how to gamble. This itchiness was a withdrawal symptom from quitting smoking.

The chances of Kim Jeong-chil, a chain smoker, quitting cigarettes were as low as finding oil in the East Sea. He quietly got up from the medical bed and wandered around the hospital. Just two days without smoking, and his body was itching so badly he thought he might die.

“Cigarettes…”

Everything had already started to look like cigarettes to him. The doctor had told him not to smoke at all, but such advice was useless to a smoker. It’s no wonder cigarettes are considered highly addictive drugs. There’s even a saying that smokers would use their other hand to light a cigarette if one hand rotted off.

Kim Jeong-chil entered the hospital convenience store and instinctively looked for cigarettes. Whether he had lung cancer or not, he needed to smoke to get rid of this withdrawal symptom. He tried to find his usual brand, but there were no cigarettes in sight.

“Huh?”

The convenience store clerk gave him a look, asking what he was looking for. Kim Jeong-chil realized that the hospital convenience store didn’t sell cigarettes. Instead, they were selling ginseng extract. He left the store. After all, he had gone there to buy cigarettes.

Kim Jeong-chil thought this was a divine message telling him not to smoke. He decided to just go back to his hospital room without smoking. His family was worried about him having lung cancer, and smoking would be betraying their concern. He knew all too well that smoking was the main cause of lung cancer. With hesitant steps, he headed back to his room.

——————————————————

“Sigh…”

Kim Jeong-chil turned his steps away from the hospital room and went to a convenience store a bit further from the hospital. Like drug addicts who seek drugs until they die, Kim Jeong-chil couldn’t overcome his desire to smoke. He wanted to scold himself for being so foolish, but filling his nicotine craving was more important. The only time he wouldn’t smoke was when he was buried in the ground.

In other words, quitting smoking was something that would only end when Kim Jeong-chil died. He tried to pick his usual brand with a familiar gesture. But there was an advertisement at the convenience store checkout promoting a new cigarette released by KT&G.

“Only nicotine…?”

It was written as the healthiest cigarette released by KT&G. It claimed to be a clean cigarette with no toxic or chemical substances. Kim Jeong-chil couldn’t help but laugh at that. A cigarette is a cigarette—there’s no such thing as a healthy one. He was living proof, having smoked so much that he got lung cancer.

But he was intrigued. If KT&G had gone all out to make a healthy cigarette, he thought he’d give it a try. Kim Jeong-chil said to the convenience store clerk:

“Give me one pack of Starlight Cigarettes, please.”

“Sure. That’ll be 4,500 won.”

The clerk handed him the cigarettes with a familiar gesture. Starlight Cigarettes made by KT&G… Kim Jeong-chil had tried other Starlight Food products before, so he had some expectations. The food made by Starlight Food had never disappointed him.

Even now, instead of the bland hospital food, he was eating Starlight Cherry Tomatoes. He was curious about what the Starlight Cigarettes made by KT&G would be like.

After carelessly tossing the plastic wrap into the trash, Kim Jeong-chil took out a cigarette and took a deep drag.