"Did you get scammed?"
Shake shake.
"Then what, bought coins and it crashed?"
Shake shake.
"Then why do you want to borrow."
"...Do you really need to know?"
"Yeah."
"With our relationship?"
"Because of our relationship, even more so."
The longer you know someone, the more careful you have to be with money issues.
As I keep emphasizing, if a crack in the relationship occurs, this Rice-Eating life is over too.
Yoon-seo stared piercingly into my eyes with a very desperate gaze.
And said.
"If I tell you the reason, you will regret hearing it while beating the ground."
"What on earth is it."
"You'll definitely pray desperately to God to send you back to before you heard it?"
That bad? What is it?
"Hearing it like that makes me too curious?"
"Can't you just lend it without being curious?"
"Nope, can't do."
"Ung Do-hyun-ah, Yoon-seo needs urgent money..."
"Even acting cute won't work."
Even if she acted cute enough to bring out the excitement I had forgotten from seeing her face for so long.
This was crossing the line.
If I accept too much whining, the kid's personality only gets worse.
"...Then forget it."
From then on, a cold war began.
For a whole week.
'Even the slip of the tongue that day only lasted a day.'
I was extremely flustered.
Is not lending money something to be this upset about?
To the point of mixing words to a minimum?
I don't understand Yoon-seo's mind.
Rather, feelings of disappointment towards her grew on my side.
I don't understand asking to borrow money, and I understand even less sulking because I refused that.
Yoon-seo isn't a woman this twisted.
Did I misjudge the person?
Did the time of 2 years change the person?
Around the time such thoughts bit the tail of others and encroached on my mind.
Yoon-seo's expression, who was continuing the hunt, suddenly turned serious.
"...Ah, I'm fucked."
"...?"
Eyes reading some text floating in the air.
She looked at me with a trembling gaze and recited this.
"Do-hyun-ah. Call 119 to my house."
Like a person forced to bring up words they never wanted to say.
"What?"
Leaving those words, she logged out of the game.
A sudden logout.
I panicked and died surrounded by numerous monsters, and even my level, which was hard to raise, dropped by 1.
But rather than regret about that, only an ominous premonition that something irreversible was happening wrapped around me.
I had memorized Yoon-seo's front door passcode.
I hurriedly entered her house and checked on her lying down.
"What is it, Lee Yoon-seo!"
Even though she was wearing the Gear, her body was clearly visibly red and heated.
Hot as if on fire.
This text was written on the Gear.
[ An abnormality has occurred in the player's body. Forcibly terminating connection. ]
"Lee Yoon-seo, wake up!"
I took off the Gear and tapped her shoulder, but her consciousness did not return.
As I stomped my feet in anxiety, only then did the 119 paramedics I called earlier arrive.
"Are you the guardian? Is the patient conscious?"
"Y... Yes, she is."
Yoon-seo, who had her eyes closed tight until just a moment ago, opened her mouth with difficulty.
"Lee Yoon-seo! Are you okay? Are you conscious?"
"Head ringing... a little quiet please."
Is she in a lot of pain? I shut my mouth.
I got on the ambulance with Yoon-seo as a guardian.
And I unintentionally overheard the conversation Yoon-seo shared with the paramedic from the side.
"Do you take any medication usually?"
Yoon-seo caught her breath and said.
"I take one immunomodulator in the morning... and one more inflammation suppressant in the evening. And I get an IV injection once a week."
At first, I thought, Why does she take so much?
Is she sicker than I thought? Is her energy low because of that? I hope she gets better quickly. I was full of such thoughts.
"Can you tell me the exact names of the medicines?"
And when I heard the words that followed.
"...Azathioprine in the morning, Prednisolone in the evening. The injection is Methotrexate... once a week."
This thought occurred.
Does a briefly sick patient remember the drug names in that much detail?
"Is there anything else?"
"Gabapentin for nerve protection, Nifedipine to prevent vascular spasms, and Propranolol for when the heart beats fast."
"...Diagnosis name?"
"...Autoimmune Neurovascular Necrosis. Code name A-NV Type 3."
It was a disease name I heard for the first time.
Cold, flu, COVID—at a glance, it wasn't that kind of disease.
But the fact that I was hearing it for the first time was already not normal.
"What are the main symptoms?"
"The immune system attacks nerves and blood vessels simultaneously. Sometimes sensation cuts off, sometimes organs swell. Fever rises without reason too."
"...Recent signs of worsening?"
"High fever repeated starting a week ago... and since yesterday, sensation in fingertips became dull. Today... the heart beat strangely fast."
At those words, the paramedic's hand stopped.
"Did you endure until now in that state?"
"...Because I didn't have money for medicine."
It's wrong.
Something is wrong, fucking wrong.
A terrible and ominous sensation gouges through my whole body.
I had felt this feeling somewhere before.
When I first faced my father's corpse.
The terrible feeling when looking at a dead family member.
I feel that feeling from the living Yoon-seo.
"Lee Yoon-seo, what is this."
"...."
"What are all those medicines. And what is your disease."
Something that shouldn't happen was happening.
This is a dream.
It must be a dream.
"...You should have just lent it when I asked."
"Lee Yoon-seo!"
"Anyway, a bastard with absolutely no clue. I told you. You'd regret it while beating the ground."
"This isn't the time for jokes!"
Around the time the ambulance arrived at the hospital.
Yoon-seo said.
"I'm dying."
"...What?"
"I'm dying, you fucking bastard."
Lee Yoon-seo's life was not smooth.
Parents who used loan sharks committed suicide, and she lived in an orphanage.
At school, she got on the wrong side of a bully and got beaten.
What's with the perpetrator's parent being a member of the National Assembly of all things?
She thought her life was just like a loser appearing in a bully webtoon.
The only difference was her pretty appearance.
Even when she wanted to commit suicide, she looked in the mirror and endured.
'Just wait, when I become an adult, I will definitely be on a roll.'
Parents abandoned her, but her appearance did not abandon her.
Yoon-seo decided to succeed no matter what and take revenge on everyone who fucked her over.
Idol, internet broadcaster, convenience store part-timer with 10 billion annual sales, she would do anything.
That resolution became colorless about a year after she became an adult.
"...Why is my body so dizzy."
She was someone who endured to the end because money was precious even if she was sick.
But that day was too hard, so she got tested at the hospital.
The result was horrific.
"The patient's diagnosis is... Autoimmune Neurovascular Necrosis."
"...What is that?"
"That is..."
According to the doctor's explanation, her disease was an extremely rare disease, with few cases even in Korea.
Since a clear cure hasn't even been discovered yet, she would virtually be in a state no different from being terminally ill.
Still, because it was discovered early, there was a long time left until it worsened.
He said she could hold on for nearly 3 years if she took medicine, but.
An incurable disease was an incurable disease.
"Doctor, this is a dream, right?"
"...Unfortunately, it is reality."
"Wow... wow..."
Yoon-seo, who couldn't stop marveling because she was so surprised.
No family, no friends, no money, and now she didn't even have health.
"Wow..."
What is the meaning of working?
I'll die anyway.
Yoon-seo, who quit the convenience store she was attending well, lived buried in alcohol all day from that day on.
And she also bought the trendy game console, Fantastic Gear, which she hadn't even glanced at because of earning money, and played every day.
The person she met in the midst of that was Seo Do-hyun.
"My life... if you ask how it's ruined... I was, hic, framed."
The man she met for the first time with alcohol somehow poured out his inner thoughts to her, which he said he hadn't told anyone.
Yoon-seo, who heard that entire story, gave a smirk instead of tears.
"You're fucking pitiful too."
"Hic... Right?"
Kinship.
The thought that I'm not the only bastard in the world whose life is ruined.
Seeing a comrade whose life was equally ruined, a small sense of camaraderie bloomed.
Yoon-seo wanted to adventure in the game world she liked with this new friend she met by chance.
To seduce this moneyless man, she used the excuse of Rice-Eating and invited Do-hyun to the fantasy world.
"Graphics are killer."
"I know, right."
Life is over anyway.
Before I die, I wanted to enjoy the emotion called friendship even a little.
Like that, they became friends.
The first friend she made was much more fun than she thought.
And money was made better than she thought.
Enough to pay for medicine steadily.
Like that, when 1 month, 1 year, 2 years passed.
"...I don't want to die."
Yoon-seo thought something she shouldn't have, because today's daily life was too enjoyable.
Just in time, good news was heard.
"They say a cure has been developed."
"Really?"
News that they succeeded in developing a complete cure for this disease overseas.
"But there is a problem."
However, the problem was that the money required for the treatment of that one disease was astronomical.
And it wasn't available domestically, so she had to go overseas.
The total cost was at a level where even if she combined all the money Yoon-seo earned in her life, it wouldn't even be a drop in the bucket.
"Life, fuuuck..."
Life is so shitty like this, but what is so good for that guy Seo Do-hyun that he always goes around grinning.
'Does he like me that much.'
If he learns the fact that I'm dying, will you be sad?
Will you come to the funeral home?
Thinking of Do-hyun who would be left alone, Yoon-seo felt like her heart was tearing apart.
Therefore, she gathered her will to live.
She saved money fiercely, and even bought lottery tickets she never bought in her life.
Money was ridiculously insufficient.
Of course, winning the lottery never happened.
Her body causes trouble more and more.
Should I have done internet broadcasting at least?
If I knew a cure would be developed, I would have bought a computer first.
It was already too late for regret.
Yoon-seo, who couldn't do anything other than Fantastia due to her already deteriorated physical condition, felt the fact that the day to tell Do-hyun the truth was slowly approaching.
How should I tell him?
Calmly?
While crying?
Or should I smirk and add, "It just turned out like that"?
The worry deepened.
Yoon-seo looked at Do-hyun's face.
"Clueless idiot."
"Why are you suddenly cursing."
The heart that started pounding every time she saw his face from some point was definitely not friendship.
However, Yoon-seo could not convey her feelings.
Because that would be too cruel a thing for Do-hyun.
She didn't want to make him, who had already lost everything, lose something precious again.
"Just because."
I really didn't want to die.
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