After giving a brief report of the situation, the teacher, Eun-seon, waited for explicit instructions before finally calling for emergency services. As they waited for an ambulance, she joined Ki-woong in ma.s.saging Dong-in's limbs.
“How long as he been like this?” she asked.
“We found him like this,” answered Yun-jeong.
“Was there anyone else?”
Yun-jeong hesitated for a moment and shared a furtive glance with Ki-woong. “No,” she said at last. “Just us.”
Looking at the two children, Eun-seon saw that they were quite the mess, hair matted with sweat and clothes stained in dirt, but she didn't think much of it. Even her forehead was alreay beading with sweat, not to mention the state of her clothes now that she was kneeling on the ground, and she had only just arrived.
“Let's hang in there. Help will be here soon.”
She meant this to rea.s.sure the tired children, but they gave no answer of any sort. Understandable, seeing as to how absolutely drained they looked. And drained they were indeed. For the two of them, the past hour had felt more like ten, and they wanted nothing more than to go to their rooms and sleep the rest of the day away.
Meanwhile, Lucid and Myeong-su had returned to their rooms.
“Will he be okay?” Myeong-su asked, his voice trembling from worry.
“Yeah, he'll be okay.” Noticing how exhausted Lucid sounded, Myeong-su began to pat his back rea.s.suringly.
As soon as they had reached the foot of the mountain, Ki-woong had called the two boys aside, his expression so serious that it was almost dark.
“Things might become more complicated if the teachers see you,” he had said, “so you should go back to your room for now. I'll take care of the rest, okay? Get washed up. And uh… Are you badly hurt? You should put some ice on that.” He told Lucid, noticing how red and swollen the boy's cheek had gotten.
However, Lucid had simply shaken his head. He had been hit, yes, but it was nothing compared to what Dong-in was going through at the moment. Honestly speaking, Lucid was just tired. He had continuously cast magic on Ki-woong so that the older boy wouldn't slip as he carried Dong-in down the mountain. It would have been better if he could have used it on everyone, but he wasn't skilled enough to accomplish such thing. On top of that, he had also used magic to bring Dong-in's body temperature up, which was the exact opposite of what he had tried to do earlier.
“Myeong-su, let's go wash.” Lucid called. His thoughts were all in a jumble, and for now, he just wanted to get cleaned up. Hopefully, a shower would also help wash away his confusion and discomfort.
On the opposite side of the inst.i.tute, Jiwon had set out to find the volunteer girl who had come with her.
“Where have you been?” the girl asked once Jiwon approached her.
“Oh, uh… You know, the cafeteria.”
“To do dishes? You should have gotten lunch while you were at it.”
She found it quite weird that Jiwon was fidgeting about and giving vague answers, but seeing the young girl's swollen hands, she could tell she had done her job. She lightly reprimanded Jiwon for not using kitchen gloves, but all she got in return was a dry, humorless smile. Just in time, one of the head volunteers called them over to have lunch, so the conversation ended there, saving both girls from further awkwardness.
With each step they took towards the cafeteria, Jiwon grew increasingly wary of b.u.mping into any of the people involved in the earlier incident, but the place was already empty when they arrived. With a small sigh of relief, Jiwon recalled Ki-woong's earlier words.
“Please keep this a secret. If word gets out, they'll all be punished. And you might also get in trouble for going up without permission. That's why I'm asking you to not tell anyone about this. Can you do that?”
Thinking back on Ki-woong's words, her thoughts naturally wandered to his face, and her heart raced. She hadn't had the time or peace of mind to really notice at the top of the mountain, but now that she was calmer, she kept remembering how firmly he had taken control of the situation and how quickly he had come up with the appropriate solutions. His deep, resounding voice still rang strong in her ears, and she could picture his determined eyes and strong jawline in her mind as clearly as if he were right in front of her.
“Hey! h.e.l.lo? Earth to Jiwon?”
“What?”
Snapping back to reality, Jiwon realized she had been standing in line holding nothing but a spoon. If it hadn't been for the older volunteer, she might have handed the lunch lady her spoon instead of a tray. She hurriedly went back to pick up a tray, her face red from embarra.s.sment.
There were hardly any residents in the cafeteria, perhaps because volunteers were only allowed in once all the children had finished eating. Still, there were two children who were still seated at a table.
“Hi again!” Myeong-su greeted cheerily as soon as he met Jiwon's eyes. Lucid gave her a cursory glance before focusing back on his food, decidedly uninterested in the girl. Jiwon waved back to Myeong-su and took a seat at the nearest table.
“How does he know you?” the older volunteer asked.
“Oh… You know, from earlier.”
“You were playing with him instead of working, weren't you? Is that why you were all red when you came back?”
The older girl grinned, fully convinced that her theory was correct. She reminded Jiwon of herself circa an hour ago, when she had felt like some sort of genius detective trying to find the missing children, and Jiwon couldn't help but smile bitterly.
“I mean, it's got to be that. He wouldn't say hi to you first unless you spent a lot of time together.”
Jiwon couldn't say anything, unwilling to explain herself and unable to find an acceptable excuse, so she simply ate in silence. Still, seeing the two children again made her worry about Dong-in. Was he doing alright?
Indeed, he was not. While Jiwon ate her food and worried in silence, Dong-in was still unconscious in his bed at the hospital, comfortably tucked under two blankets. The doctor turned to the inst.i.tute teacher, his worry clear on his face.
“His temperature is back to normal,” he explained, “but he must have been hypothermic for a while. We've done all we can for now, so we'll just have to wait and see.”
“But he'll wake up soon, won't he?”
“I can't say for sure. Not before this IV bag runs out, I'm afraid. But there is something I'm worried about.”
“What? What is it? Is there something wrong?”
“Oh, I can't give you a definitive answer, since I'm not sure what caused it, but there are traces of frostbite on his left hand and both his feet.”
“Frostbite?” the teacher asked, staggering back in surprise.
“Considering the weather, it's a strange symptom. Is there anything you can think of that might have caused it? Perhaps he was skiing, or something of the sort?”
As the doctor had said, though it was December, it hadn't snowed in the area for quite some time, and it made no sense for an inst.i.tute resident to go skiing by himself. The teacher turned to look at Ki-woong, but he only stood there quietly. After all, there was nothing he could really say.
“I'm not sure.” The teacher answered at last. “But it's not serious, is it?”
“No, it's not. As I said, it's just traces, and he'll heal naturally.”
“Oh, okay.”
“It's not unheard of. Poor circulation coupled with excessive sweating is known to possibly cause frostbite. Still, this is an unusual case. Frostbite and hypothermia aren't very common around here.”
Of course, there was something else the doctor suspected. When they had examined Dong-in, they hadn't found any obvious proof of violence or other such abuse, so he had ruled it out as a possibility, but he decided that the teacher should be warned about it regardless. He'd just have to be vague about it.
“It's possible that he stayed outside in the cold for too long after running around or exercising a lot. So I think it'd be best if you didn't let the children… “play” outside for too long.”
The teacher understood the doctor perfectly. She had understood his concerns and that he had been gracious enough to sidestep the issue, and this rea.s.surred her.
“Oh, our children simply love soccer so much, so they still run around outside to play, but we've set… Appropriate times for them to go out. And of course, we make sure that they all wash properly afterwards. Isn't that right?” she asked, turning once again towards Ki-woong.
“Yes.” Ki-woong answered simply. After all, it was all true. “But sir, did Dong-in sweat so much?”
This was an unexpected question. The doctor had a.s.sumed that the boy had simply followed the teacher, since he had been quiet the entire time he had been there, but it was his duty as the doctor in charge to answer any and all questions that legal guardians had.
“What? Oh. See, that's why it's strange. The nurse who took his clothes told me that they were covered in dirt, but no sweat. Besides, frostbite around the toes can be explained easily enough, but the fingers? Not so much. It's hard to explain.”
More specifically, he hadn't sweated enough to cause any sort of damage from cold exposure, but that wasn't the important part. The key point was that they needed to find another explanation for the frostbite on the fingers. Frostbite was caused by the skin's direct exposure to extremely cold temperatures, ranging from -2 to -10°C (28 to 14°F). Parts with relatively poor blood circulation usually showed such clear signs of damage, but this didn't apply to Dong-in at all.
“Sir, do people's bodies get ice cold when they're exposed to cold air for a long time?”
Now the doctor was certain that this boy was a strange one. The questions he asked!
“We do use the phrase “ice cold” to refer to people's body temperature, but no matter how cold people get, they still retain some heat, so they're not literally as cold as ice. It's impossible for a living body to drop to such a low temperature. Still, when we touch something that's colder than our own body temperature, our nerves can mistake it as being literally ice cold. So if you're referring to Dong-in, it's possible that you just thought he was ice cold.”
Ki-woong wanted nothing more than to explain that he wasn't mistaken, that Dong-in really had gone ice cold in the very literal sense of the phrase, but he had to hold his tongue. The teacher was already looking at him suspiciously, and he couldn't risk asking (or raising) any more questions.
“For now, we'll need him to stay so we can monitor his condition. He lost consciousness, so even if his body temperature is back to normal, I'd like to keep him in for a full day before we start to discuss any more treatments.”
The teacher decided to follow the doctor's instructions. She had asked Ki-woong to carry Dong-in to the inst.i.tute's front gate into the ambulance, and since he couldn't tell her that he'd already carried him all the way from the mountain, Ki-woong had done as she asked without a word. Then Dong-in had been admitted and treated and monitored, and still, it was only one in the afternoon. There were still too many volunteers working at the inst.i.tute, and it would do no good to bring Dong-in back in this state. She also figured that her higher ups would prefer to keep him here for the night.
“Ki-woong, I'm sure you can go back to the inst.i.tute without my help, right? I'm afraid I'll have to stay here with Dong-in, make sure he's alright.”
“Of course. Don't worry about me, miss.”
“Oh, and please make sure that no weird rumors spread about this.” She said as she handed him money for a taxi. “You're very smart, so I'm sure you know what I mean.”
“Of course. I understand.”
Ki-woong then left the hospital and waited by the street to catch a taxi. As he waited, all sorts of thoughts flooded his brain.
He was sure that he wasn't mistaken about how cold Dong-in's skin had felt. It had felt as thought he had stuck his hand in ice water. If he had to put a number to it, he figured it had been very close to 3, or even 2°C (36-35°F). Such temperatures would certainly explain the frostbite. But the problem was that people didn't get that cold. If his skin had gone down to such extreme temperatures, couldn't that mean that his insides had gotten much colder? But then, how was Dong-in still alive? His skin should have completely frozen over.
The more he thought about it, the more confused he felt. He suddenly remembered the phrase “no smoke without a fire.” Could this be the smoke without the fire? Ki-woong couldn't help but laugh at the thought. This was no time for guesses and detective games.
If Jiwon had heard that, she might have dug herself a hole to hide in, but thankfully she wasn't, and even more thankfully, Ki-woong had no idea about her earlier detective games.
For now, he'd just focus on getting back to the inst.i.tute. He would think about this more once he was back in his room.
“Taxi!”
