Ki-hwan's driver takes him directly from Yeongdeok Street to Seoul National University Hospital. He does not change his clothes. He arrives in the same black coat with the same expression and the attending physician meets him at the elevator bank on the fourteenth floor and walks him through the latest results with the practiced calm of a man who has learned exactly what Ki-hwan needs without being told.
The news is better than expected. His mother — Park Soo-yeon, seventy-one years old, the wo