When I opened my eyes, I saw an unfamiliar white ceiling, just like the beginning of a novel.
A steady beeping sound could be heard—beep... beep... beep...
A cool breeze was blowing, perhaps from an open window. The navy curtains fluttered like a skirt. It was a clean breeze without the scent of salt. The lukewarm air brushed directly against my face.
There were strange things attached to my arm. A name tag. Paper bandages. Someone had even doodled on it with a marker. There were also tubes that looked like IV lines. Upon closer inspection, I realized they were exactly that. Just as I had thought, they were indeed IV lines.
I wanted to sit up, so I forced my body to rise. Instantly, a headache struck. The pain was beyond imagination.
‘But more importantly...’
Where am I? Am I lying in a bed right now?
With several questions in mind, I absentmindedly placed my feet on the floor.
But that was a mistake.
The IV line that had been stuck in my arm was abruptly pulled out, and I fell straight to the ground. Something felt off. Why? The feeling of discomfort was more unsettling than the pain from falling.
I heard someone open the door with a clatter. Hurried footsteps followed. At last, a voice spoke.
“Hey! Are you okay? When did you wake up? I need to find the doctor... No, first, let’s get you up! Can you move to the bed? You can do it, right?”
“.....”
“Oh! Right, you don’t speak English, do you? What was I thinking? Anyway... here, give me your arm... um... your arm is attached, right? Arm? Do you know ‘arm’?”
This person seemed quite flustered.
I responded to her.
“Your accent is a bit unusual, but I understand everything you’re saying. I can speak English.”
“Huh...?”
“Could you help me? Please grab my arm.”
“Oh! Your arm! Right, of course!”
With her help, I managed to sit on the bed. She touched different parts of my arms and legs, as if checking my condition.
She pressed the call button on the bed. She cleaned up the fallen IV line. She ran out to find someone. Honestly, she looked frantic.
Only then did I take a look around the room. I saw a few pieces of furniture, like a chair, desk, and some storage units.
Among them, a small vanity mirror caught my eye.
‘…A child?’
The child version of me from the time I had just boarded the flight to Singapore was staring back at me. When I raised my hand, the child raised his hand too. When I touched my face, he touched his face as well. The child, wearing a patient gown like a doppelgänger, mimicked my every move.
Just then, the door opened again. This time, there were more people—about ten. A middle-aged man standing in the center asked me a question.
Everything felt confusing.
“I heard you can speak English. Is that right?”
“Uh… Yes.”
“That’s a relief. I’m going to ask you a few questions, and you can answer with whatever comes to mind. First, what’s your name?”
“It’s Han Seojin…”
“How old are you?”
“But… What are you all doing here right now?”
“We’re just checking on your condition. Do you know what today’s date is? Or maybe what season it is?”
“I’m not sure about the date… but it’s probably summer.”
“Alright. Is there anything that comes to mind when you think about what happened before you woke up? Anything at all?”
“……”
“The last scenery you saw, or the meal you ate... You can just speak comfortably.”
“The food I ate was dried fish...”
“When?”
“...”
“You can’t remember when. Hmm.”
“...”
I looked around again. A group of people in white coats were staring at me. Scribble, scribble, scribble. Each of them was writing something down.
The name tag of the person asking me questions, who seemed to be the representative of the group, caught my eye.
Jang Loong, MD, PhD.
Singapore General Hospital
If it’s MD, PhD, then...
“A doctor?”
Suddenly, a chill ran down my spine.
It felt like being struck by a hammer.
The empty void in my memory seemed to fill up all at once.
We escaped.
We made it out, piercing through that vast ocean.
We really escaped!
“Do you remember your parents’ names? Brothers or friends would be fine, too.”
The doctor kept pestering me with questions, not giving me time to marvel at my realization.
But I decided to ask something far more important than any of that nonsense.
“What about Uncle Miller?”
“Huh?”
“Well, Mark Miller, the man who was on the same boat as me.”
“...Who did you say?”
“Mark Miller. A white man in his late 40s. He was definitely right next to me.”
“....”
The doctors suddenly started whispering among themselves, ignoring me.
What on earth are they doing?
Just as I was about to complain, one of the doctors spoke first.
“Do you remember anything about the plane crash...?”
I finally lost my temper at their audacity.
“Yes. Yes, yes. I remember everything perfectly. You mean AC 2505, the flight Captain David Reed was piloting. The plane going from Korea to Singapore. It crashed. I was on that plane. Do you think I wouldn’t know that?”
“....”
“So, can you please answer my question first? Mark Miller. Is he here at the hospital? He was rescued with me, right? You didn’t lose him or anything, did you?”
“....”
“Excuse me, doctor?”
“....”
Instead of giving me an answer, the doctor sighed and started explaining something strange.
“For your information, all passengers of flight AC 2505 survived.”
“Then Mark Miller also...”
“No. The last survivor was you, Han Seojin.”
“What?”
All the plane passengers survived, but I’m the last survivor?
What kind of strange talk is that?
Whether it was because I had questions or because the doctor was trying to help me understand, he continued explaining.
“For reference, all the passengers from this plane crash are currently admitted to this hospital. There were a total of 250 passengers, along with 6 crew members, 1 captain, and 1 co-pilot. I’m the doctor in charge of all 258 of them. But there’s no one named Mark Miller.”
“......”
“Also, in a major accident like this, it’s quite normal for trauma to arise due to the psychological shock. So don’t worry too much. Let’s take our time and address Han Seojin’s issue gradually.”
“......”
I held back and held back, but eventually, I screamed.
And I did so for quite a long time.
* * *
Perhaps because of my outburst, they went ahead and showed me the list of survivors.
I read through the entire list without skipping a single name.
But.
“How about now? There’s no one named Mark Miller, right?”
“......”
“It might be better to face reality like this. That’s why I showed it to you on purpose, Seojin. Let’s talk more about the details tomorrow, and for today, get some rest. Right now, your stability is the most important thing. Understood?”
“......”
Just as they said, I couldn’t find the person I was looking for.
I couldn’t make sense of this situation at all.
It wasn’t just the issue with Mr. Miller, but there was also something wrong with me.
I was still stuck in the body of a 12-year-old, exactly as I had been at the time of the accident. My once tall stature had shrunk, and the dark tan that used to cover my skin was nowhere to be found.
Should I say that I’ve gone back to the past? Or should I say that I never aged in the first place? Truly unbelievable things were happening.
Because I answered “I’m 15 years old” when the doctor asked my age, there was a brief commotion. Everyone seemed surprised. The doctor just kept telling me to rest and said we’d talk about this tomorrow.
Later, I heard that I had been rescued 15 days after the plane crash.
15 days.
The time I spent on the uninhabited island was three years.
There was clearly a discrepancy in my perception of time.
While I was piecing these facts together, I received a phone call from my parents. They were crying uncontrollably upon hearing my voice. I barely managed to keep my emotions in check. How long had it been since I last heard their voices? How long, really...
My parents said they had joined the rescue team in Malaysia and would come to Singapore as soon as there was an available flight.
A few people from the South Korean embassy came to visit me as well. It seemed that the media was making quite a fuss over the fact that I had been rescued “after only 15 days.” They told me they were trying their best to calm the press, but advised me not to leave the hospital for the time being.
I sat on the hospital bed, deep in thought.
When I looked at the clock, it was 9 AM.
I found myself mesmerized by the ticking second hand.
‘How long has it been since I last saw a clock...?’
I didn’t know. Everything was confusing. I couldn’t help it. My last three years were being denied. It was impossible to make sense of it all so easily.
A nurse was assigned to take care of me exclusively. When I looked at her, she smiled softly. She was the first frantic person I saw when I woke up in the hospital.
“Feeling bored? Should I play with you?”
“No.”
“Why? I’m bored. Should we do something? Hmm. Do you happen to like any games?”
“Games...?”
“Yeah. I was wondering if you like puzzle games or something. Is there anything we could play together? Should I look something up?”
“...”
Ah!
A thought suddenly came to mind. I had been on the deserted island for too long, so I couldn’t think of it right away.
The nurse’s smartphone she had been fiddling with.
With that, I could search for anything I wanted on the internet.
I asked her a favor.
“Could I borrow your phone for a moment?”
The nurse handed me the smartphone with no hesitation. She even told me to use it freely.
I thanked her and went straight to a search engine.
My hands were trembling slightly, but it didn’t matter.
There was only one thing to search for here.
Mark Millar.
Records about him appeared.
Without hesitation, I clicked on the first entry.
A photo of Mark Millar and a brief biography.
Below that, detailed entries could be seen.
.
.
.
Mark Miller started playing the piano at the age of five and received instruction from several renowned professors at the Katowice Academy of Music. He was even mentioned as a strong contender for the 13th Chopin Piano Competition, but had to withdraw due to wrist tendinitis, forcing him to give up his dream of becoming a pianist.
(…)
Unable to succeed as a pianist, he enrolled in Berklee College of Music and resumed his studies in composition.
While Mark Miller was active mainly in Los Angeles and New York, he wasn’t a particularly well-known composer. However, several pieces he composed in his later years were rediscovered after his death, gaining immense popularity.
In particular, his song “Live Forever”, which topped the Billboard HOT 100, continues to be loved by listeners. Achieving the unprecedented feat of holding the number one spot for 24 consecutive weeks, “Live Forever” swept every award that year. Even today, many singers release remakes of the song in tribute to Mark Miller.
Mark Miller died at the peak of his life, at the age of 47, in a plane crash while on his way to Singapore for a rehearsal request. All passengers on board perished, and following the incident, airlines significantly reinforced their safety protocols...
I stopped reading. With trembling hands, I set the smartphone down on the table and stared blankly out the window.
The complexity of my reality and the reality beyond me became entangled.
Mr. Miller had died 10 years ago.
I had spent three years with him on a deserted island.
Yet, in this world, only 15 days had passed.
That’s as much as I could grasp.
“Ten years ago…”
In short, Uncle Miller had died in a plane crash when I was just two years old.
So, did that mean everything I remembered was an illusion?
Could it be, as the doctors suspect, that these are false memories born from trauma?
I’m not sure...
But the memories of the past three years are too vivid for that to be true.
What about the English I’m speaking fluently now? The knowledge in my head that Uncle Miller taught me? Are all the memories from the deserted island fake? That can’t possibly be true.
I wanted to find proof.
I asked the nurse, “Could I perhaps see the belongings I originally had with me?”
“Hm? When you arrived at the hospital, you didn’t have anything that could be called belongings. All you had were the clothes you were wearing.”
“What about the guitar case?”
“There wasn’t anything like that. If you’re curious, you should probably ask the people who rescued you. They’re not here right now, though.”
“Then could I at least see the clothes I was wearing?”
“Sure, that’s no problem.”
The nurse got up as if it were a simple request, opened the closet, and took out a cardboard box from the bottom. She handed it to me.
When I opened the lid of the box, there was a single set of worn-out clothes inside.
I started searching through the pockets of the clothes, one by one.
‘Maybe there’s nothing...’
But my worry only lasted for a moment.
Inside the shirt pocket, I found two pieces of paper, crumpled and folded.
I couldn’t help but give a bitter smile as I began to understand the situation.
‘I’m sure I had put these in the guitar case.’
I slowly unfolded the two pieces of paper.
One was a plane ticket with the flight number AC2505 and the name Han Seojin written on it.
And the other one.
‘AC 162. Mark Miller...’
It was clearly a plane ticket with his name on it, someone who had once existed.
On the back of Mr. Miller’s plane ticket, which had faded over time, there was some small writing.
Relatively clear.
- To my eternal friend, Seojin. I hope a brilliant path lies ahead for you. -
