RCKS 9

The place where the two were standing was like that, and a few steps behind, cars were passing by quickly, and even though he had often encountered various environments while touring unfamiliar filming locations, this place was completely devoid of people.

If he called mom or dad on the phone, they would come right away, but he was at a loss as to how to explain this place at all. Because the only things visible around were the mountain, the road, and the sea.

But in this environment, if Lee Yoonsan got scared and started crying, then he himself would probably want to cry too. So, Hwang Haekyung thought first that he had to prevent Lee Yoonsan from crying. Even if he was hyung or a higher grader, Hwang Haekyung was just an 11-year-old boy.

“Let’s play.”

“You won’t cry, right?”

“Yeah.”

Hwang Haekyung sought confirmation from the belated response that burst out from Lee Yoonsan. Hwang Haekyung also needed a definite answer that Lee Yoonsan would not cry. Only then would it not feel anxious.

“Then let’s go. Follow me.”

“Yeah!”

He just had to do it like usual. Like when he led the kids around and played wildly, he would play with Lee Yoonsan, and around the time Lee Yoonsan was soothed to the point where he really would not cry, he would call his parents on the cell phone. If he said they had not gotten lost but had just come far while playing, his parents would not scold them, he thought.

But if Lee Yoonsan got scared, cried, and the fact that they were lost was found out by the parents, they would probably get scolded. 11-year-old Hwang Haekyung hated the situation of getting scolded by his parents the most, and if he could avoid getting scolded, he could resort to a little lie.

In the end, the two went to the coastal area and went down to the coastal rocks. Shallow waves were coming in, and a beach was visible where the coastal rocks extended far away. Perhaps because it was vacation season, there were quite a few people at the beach far away.

“Eek, I almost fell!”

Lee Yoonsan, following Hwang Haekyung who had climbed onto the coastal rocks first like a nimble squirrel, clumsily climbed between the rocks. Then, he staggered and almost fell big time, and he put his hand on his startled chest and shouted.

Hwang Haekyung found such Lee Yoonsan just amusing. So, he laughed, and seeing Hwang Haekyung’s laugh, Lee Yoonsan grinned widely and laughed along. The somewhat scared feeling disappeared because of Hwang Haekyung’s laugh.

“Look at this, here, a crab!”

“Eek!”

When Hwang Haekyung caught a small fiddler crab from the crevice between the rocks where the waves were coming in and showed it to Lee Yoonsan while scaring him with a whoop, Lee Yoonsan fell backward in great surprise. This time, he fell on his butt on the rock, so it seemed quite painful, but he did not whine or cry because his mind was distracted by the crab.

Hwang Haekyung showed such Lee Yoonsan the crab in detail, and around the time Lee Yoonsan was looking at the crab wriggling between Hwang Haekyung’s fingers as if it were amazing and had relaxed, he threw the crab toward Lee Yoonsan’s body. Then, Lee Yoonsan screamed again and freaked out, and Hwang Haekyung laughed as if it were fun watching that sight.

The two played like that for a long time. Hwang Haekyung kept discovering and moving to amazing things around as if to prove why he was so popular among his friends. He moved well between the rocks where the waves were coming in and told Lee Yoonsan that this looked like seaweed, and actually, there were extremely gross rock crabs living in places like this. Lee Yoonsan found everything Hwang Haekyung showed and told him completely amazing.

The way he ran excitedly on the rocks with thin legs and body like girls, and the way he casually grabbed and touched things that Lee Yoonsan found gross and did not even want to touch, all of it was just amazing.

Of course, in between, when he played mischievous pranks like throwing sand grains as if they were bugs or picking up some trash-like seaweed and pushing it saying to eat it, Lee Yoonsan had no choice but to get annoyed, but still, it was an amazing and fun experience. They were so absorbed in playing that they even forgot the sky had darkened.

“Now let’s call mom to come.”

“Wait a bit.”

The darkened sky and the waves coming in a bit deeper were creating another scenery. Lee Yoonsan had been laughing and running around, but when he came to his senses, he seemed scared again by the surroundings that had become dim and unfamiliar once more. Hwang Haekyung took out the cell phone from his pants pocket. It had gotten wet here and there from playing pranks and playing, but it was not to the point of turning off.

“Haekyung, I’m scared….”

“Okay, stay still for a bit.”

The sky that had been getting a little dim by little was now completely dark. Lee Yoonsan was sitting on the rock exhausted from playing, and Hwang Haekyung, standing in front, was pressing the cell phone to make a call. It seemed the call was not connecting, as the time for the signal to go was getting longer. It was common at the camping site.

Hwang Haekyung coming back late from playing with friends was originally a common thing, and the camping site was an atmosphere where there were many things to worry about, and there were even more things to prepare when it was time for meals, so missing calls happened frequently.

However, the situation of Hwang Haekyung and Lee Yoonsan right now was not good.

“Let’s go up first….”

“Hey!”

That was why Lee Yoonsan, looking around with a face full of fear, shook Hwang Haekyung’s clothes. The waves seemed to be coming closer little by little, and with the surroundings getting dark, and the people visible at the beach far away now not visible well because of the darkness, fear welled up.

But such action of Lee Yoonsan led to a disaster. As dad did not pick up the phone, Hwang Haekyung was operating the cell phone to call mom this time, but because of the shaking force from Lee Yoonsan, he dropped the cell phone.

The two froze in surprise at the cell phone that had fallen into the sea between the rock crevices and disappeared.

“Huh, what do we do….”

Lee Yoonsan’s voice started to mix with a crying tone. Hwang Haekyung looked at such Lee Yoonsan as if annoyed, but he could not get angry. It was because the waves seemed to have gotten higher, and the seawater from the waves crashing on the rocks suddenly wet Hwang Haekyung’s arms and back. The splashing waves were fast, high, and threatening. It was completely different from just a few hours ago in the daytime.

“Hey, get up.”

“Huh, how… the phone….”

“Get up first. We have to go up.”

Hwang Haekyung spoke in a voice mixed with some annoyance and tried to grab Lee Yoonsan’s arm to pull him up. But perhaps because the weight class difference was too big, Lee Yoonsan’s body did not lift at all.

Hwang Haekyung got annoyed once more there. He had heard countless times that he had to protect his dongsaeng for sure, but Lee Yoonsan was bigger than him. The friends he met at the camping site every vacation teased such Lee Yoonsan calling him a pig one by one, but from some point on, Hwang Haekyung just envied that Lee Yoonsan was big in build and tall, whether he was a pig or not.

“Ah, don’t cry and get up!”

“I didn’t cry?!”

So, even the fact that he was not budging even though he was pulling so hard right now made him angry. Even though he was the opponent he had been playfully teasing and playing with excitedly just a moment ago.

In the end, Hwang Haekyung grabbed Lee Yoonsan’s wrist and resorted to forcibly pulling him. Because of that, Lee Yoonsan’s arm, who could not stand up properly and was half-standing awkwardly, was yanked forward, and the recoil made Hwang Haekyung’s body stagger greatly.

“Hey!”

And the two fell together between the coastal rocks.

---

“Yoonsan!”

“Are you okay, son? Are you conscious?!”

The place where Lee Yoonsan opened his eyes was the emergency room of Hallasan Hospital. Lee Yoonsan made a bewildered expression at the sight of his moms calling his name while looking at him beside him, and soon he remembered the situation before he lost consciousness.

“Mom….”

“Yes, mom is here. Is Yoonsan okay? Is there anywhere that hurts?”

“Yeah, I’m okay….”

Because he had grabbed and shaken Hwang Haekyung’s clothes, Hwang Haekyung’s cell phone had fallen into the sea between the rocks. And because the waves crashed big, Hwang Haekyung’s back got completely wet, and while Hwang Haekyung was trying to forcibly pull him up, he had half-stood awkwardly and the two had fallen into the sea together.

They had fallen together into a very narrow crevice between the rocks and trembled in fear while submerged in water, and he remembered Hwang Haekyung yelling and getting angry at something while he was flailing in fear. And after that….

“Is Yoonsan okay?”

While Lee Yoonsan was blankly in his moms’ arms like that, the curtain beside opened, and Hwang Haekyung’s mother’s voice came. It was a very cautious voice full of worry. Lee Yoonsan’s mothers finally let go of Lee Yoonsan in their arms, and he could see Hwang Haekyung lying on the bed right next to him.

“Mom, Haekyung….”

“He’s okay, baby. Just a little scrape.”

He could see the bandage wrapped covering Hwang Haekyung’s forehead and eyebrow. Seeing Hwang Haekyung who seemed more injured than thought, tears started to well up on Lee Yoonsan’s face, and while stroking such Lee Yoonsan’s head, Hwang Haekyung’s mother spoke soothingly. It was a scrape on the left eyebrow area, and they had just wrapped the bandage largely.

Of course, there were also minor bruises here and there on Hwang Haekyung’s limbs. They seemed to be wounds from falling together with him, or wounds from when he was flailing in the narrow rock crevice after falling into the water.

In the end, tears burst from Lee Yoonsan’s eyes. It felt like all of Hwang Haekyung lying injured was because of him, so he felt sorry and scared. He felt sorry thinking Hwang Haekyung might be in pain, and he was scared that Hwang Haekyung’s parents might come to hate him.

And as if dispelling such fear of Lee Yoonsan, Hwang Haekyung’s mother swept Lee Yoonsan’s bangs aside and smiled.

“Baby, hyung is okay. You have to stop crying. You hurt too, right?”

It was still an affectionate and warm touch. So, Lee Yoonsan ended up bursting into sobs while clinging to Hwang Haekyung’s mother. Hwang Haekyung’s father, who was sitting holding Hwang Haekyung’s hand that was still asleep, also smiled awkwardly at that sight.

When they found the children, it was a dizzying situation. Around the time they were worrying because the children did not return to the camper van even though the sky had darkened, it started with Hwang Haekyung’s father checking the call from Hwang Haekyung on his own cell phone.

He checked Hwang Haekyung’s cell phone location because of a strange feeling, and fortunately, because the cell phone had not turned off, he could roughly find the children’s location.

The children were barely holding on submerged in a narrow crevice in the coastal sea, with the big-bodied Lee Yoonsan stuck in the rock crevice, and Hwang Haekyung hugging Lee Yoonsan’s head in his arms while patting Lee Yoonsan’s back.

At the time of discovery, Lee Yoonsan was unconscious, and both children had drastically dropped body temperatures, so it was a situation where they had to be urgently loaded into the ambulance. It seemed Hwang Haekyung had barely kept his mind to calm Lee Yoonsan, and as soon as the adults arrived and pulled him up, he lost consciousness and fainted.

Throughout the move to the ambulance, the paramedic explained the wounds on Hwang Haekyung’s arms and eyebrows or guessed the situation at the time of discovery. He said Hwang Haekyung’s wounds seemed to be from trying to calm Lee Yoonsan who was flailing in the water, and the scratches on Lee Yoonsan’s both forearms or back were also presumed to be wounds from being stuck on the rocks.

For that reason, the wound range on Lee Yoonsan’s both forearms and back was wide, but if Lee Yoonsan’s large build had not held Hwang Haekyung, both could have been submerged in the water in the rock crevice and a terrible thing could have happened.

No matter what reason they went there, the children were found in a place quite far from the camping site, and since even the cell phone had fallen into the sea, they had been in very great danger. At that point, the children’s parents and adoptive parents had to receive a shock like their hearts stopping for a moment.

The fortunate thing was that the children’s breathing and pulse were alive, and the point that both vomited up vomit inside the ambulance moving to the emergency room. After arriving at the emergency room, they focused on raising the body temperatures of the children who had dropped due to hypothermia, and conducted other examinations but no abnormalities were found. It was the moment when the children’s parents and adoptive parents could finally breathe a sigh of relief.

The two families could only leave the hospital with the children around late at night. Because both families had left the camper vans at the camping site, they each took a taxi back to the camping site, and wanted to return home worrying about the children’s conditions.

But the children’s opinions were not like that. Hwang Haekyung, who had regained consciousness, expressed that since he was not hurt much, he wanted to continue spending the vacation here, and Lee Yoonsan, who was huddled only on the camper van bed with his head down feeling extremely guilty, also gave the opinion that he did not want to end the vacation camping because of him.

The children’s parents and adoptive parents scolded them strictly saying this incident was a big event where you could have gone wrong, but the children’s opinions were consistent. Judging from that point, it was fortunate that this incident did not seem to remain as trauma for the children.

In the end, the camping did not withdraw, but the two children received the punishment of having to stay confined inside their respective camper vans. In fact, even without the no-outing discipline, the two already had no energy to play more today.

In the end, Hwang Haekyung, who was originally weak-bodied, ended up catching a severe cold, and Lee Yoonsan also had to suffer from a cold after going through such a big event.