After Jin-woo's parents and Ha-jun were properly settled in Oxford, a full month passed in relative calm. The house in North Oxford began to feel less like a temporary lodging and more like a home. Young-sook had arranged the kitchen exactly the way she liked it. Jin-ho had filled half the study shelves with his mathematical texts. Ha-jun had started calling the Dragon School "my school" without hesitation.
Jin-woo decided it was time to begin the academic side of his new life in earnest. He needed to register formally for his doctoral work and meet the research group that would support the A2 UK laboratory.
That morning he cleaned himself properly and dressed with quiet care. A clean white shirt, dark trousers, and a white puffer jacket suitable for the unpredictable English weather. He checked his reflection once in the hallway mirror, adjusted the collar, and slipped his notebook into the inner pocket.
Young-sook was already in the kitchen preparing breakfast. The smell of seaweed soup and toasted bread filled the warm space.
"You look ready," she said, glancing at him over her shoulder. "Don't stay too late. The first day is only for introductions."
"I won't," Jin-woo answered. He bent slightly to kiss the top of Ha-jun's head. The boy was still in his school uniform, swinging his legs under the table and carefully arranging his dinosaur toys in a neat row beside his plate while looking at a maths puzzle book in his other hand.
"Uncle, will you come back before dinner?" Ha-jun asked.
"I will try," Jin-woo said. "If the meetings finish early, I will walk with you by the river."
Ha-jun nodded, satisfied. Jin-ho looked up from his newspaper and gave a small, approving nod. The ordinary morning felt peaceful.
Jin-woo left the house at half past eight. The air was cool and damp, the kind of soft English morning that made the red-brick houses look even more settled and permanent. He walked down the cobblestone driveway, turned onto the quiet residential road, and headed toward the city centre. He had decided not to take the car. The walk would clear his head and give him time to think about the first set of research priorities he had written the previous week.
He crossed the main road near the Banbury Road junction, waiting for the light to change. As the light turned green, he slowly began to cross the road. Suddenly a notification came to his phone. As he began to cross while trying to remove his phone from the coat pocket, he did not realise that a silver delivery van was approaching from the left. The driver appeared distracted, glancing down at a phone mounted on the dashboard.
Just as the driver looked up at the red light and tried to apply the brakes, the road was slippery due to the weather, and the grip of the tyres on the road was not strong, so it took time for the driver to stop the van.
In the meantime, a loud sound of something hitting the van echoed on the road. "Thud…"
People who were walking on the road saw a tall man wearing a white jacket thrown high into the air by the impact of the collision. The impact was sudden and brutal. Metal struck bone and cloth. Jin-woo's body was thrown sideways onto the wet asphalt. His notebook flew from his pocket and landed several metres away, pages fluttering open in the light rain.
Jin-woo slowly tried to move his hand to touch his stomach. When he raised his hand, he saw that it was covered with blood. Slowly his vision began to turn dark.
His life began to pass before his eyes. His dead brother and sister-in-law, who used to take care of him, appeared in his vision.
Jin-woo saw his brother appearing in his sight. "Brother. Where were you? I cannot live without you."
Jin-woo's brother looked at him and said, "Jin-woo, it is not time yet. You should take care of our parents and Ha-jun. Also, there is someone who is waiting for you. You cannot die yet."
As soon as his brother said this, Jin-woo lost consciousness.
The hospital corridor smelled of disinfectant and cold coffee. Young-sook sat on a plastic chair outside the intensive care unit, her hands clasped so tightly that the knuckles had turned white. Jin-ho stood beside her, glasses slightly askew, staring at the closed double doors as if he could force them open by pure will.
A doctor in blue scrubs finally emerged. His voice was calm but careful.
"Mr. Seo's life is out of danger."
Hearing this, both Young-sook and Jin-ho sighed with relief. But then the doctor struck them with more devastating news.
"Although Mr. Seo is out of danger, he is still in a deep coma. There is significant trauma to the head and several fractures. We have stabilised him, but we cannot yet say when—or if—he will wake. The next seventy-two hours are critical."
Young-sook made a small, broken sound and pressed her fist against her mouth. Jin-ho placed a hand on her shoulder, but his own face had gone pale.
Ha-jun arrived later that afternoon, brought by the driver who had been called from the school. He still wore his navy school sweater. When the nurse allowed a short visit, the boy stood at the foot of the hospital bed and stared.
His uncle looked wrong. The machines beeped steadily. Tubes ran into Jin-woo's arms and under the bandages wrapped around his head. The face that usually smiled or spoke in a quiet, measured voice was still and unfamiliar.
Ha-jun did not cry at first. He simply stood there, holding the small plastic dinosaur he had brought from home, until Young-sook gently guided him out of the room.
That night, back in the North Oxford house, Ha-jun refused dinner. He sat on the edge of his bed with the dinosaur clutched against his chest and stared at the floor. When Jin-ho tried to speak to him, the boy only whispered, "Uncle said he would walk with me by the river."
In the days that followed, the house changed. The usual rhythm of meals and quiet conversation collapsed. Young-sook moved between the kitchen and the hospital like a ghost who had lost her soul. Jin-ho spent long hours in the study with the lights off, the leather-bound volume unopened on the desk. Ha-jun stopped speaking much at all.
On the fifth morning, Mrs. Abernathy telephoned from the Dragon School. Ha-jun had not arrived. When Jin-ho went to his room, he found the boy still in pyjamas, sitting on the floor beside the bed.
He was looking at Jin-woo's notebook. When his grandfather came into the room, he looked at him with a serious face and asked, "Grandpa, can you tell me what my uncle was working on?"
Hearing this, Jin-ho's eyes filled with tears. This was the same question Jin-woo had asked him when his older brother died. He still remembered the scene where his younger son had matured rapidly in a single day before him. He did not want Ha-jun to go down a similar road, but he could not stop a child from wanting to know about his father's and uncle's work either.
Jin-ho took a deep breath and said, "They were trying to create a…"
Ha-jun listened quietly without a word. Time passed slowly. After half an hour, Jin-ho finally stopped and said, "This is all I know." Then he said to Ha-jun,
"Your uncle is sleeping very deeply right now. The doctors are taking care of him. But if he were awake, and if he could see you sitting here every day refusing to go to school, I think he would feel sad. He worked hard so you could have this life here. He would want you to keep living it."
Ha-jun was silent for a long time. Then he simply said, "I will go."
After that he began to pack his bag. He did not touch even a single dinosaur but packed his maths books. He also went to Jin-woo's room to get an easy book on AI to read.
Then he ate a small amount of rice. At the front door he paused, looked back at the quiet house, and then walked down the driveway with his grandfather.
In the weeks that followed, something quiet and serious settled over the five-year-old. He still visited the hospital every few days, standing at the foot of the bed and telling his uncle in careful English about the new book the teacher had read. He returned to school every morning. He helped his grandmother set the table in the evenings. He no longer asked when Uncle would wake up. Instead he simply said, "When Uncle wakes up, I will show him how good I was."
The other children noticed the change. Louis once told Maya that Ha-jun seemed older somehow, as if he had grown taller inside even though his height remained the same. Teachers observed that the quiet Korean boy now listened more carefully, spoke less, and offered all his toys to others without being prompted.
At home, Young-sook sometimes found him standing at the large study window, looking out at the garden the way Jin-woo used to. She never asked what he was thinking. She only rested a hand on his shoulder for a moment before returning to the kitchen.
Jin-ho, watching from his desk, understood. The accident had broken the careful structure they had built. Yet in the middle of that brokenness, a small child had chosen to keep walking forward—not because the pain had disappeared, but because he believed his uncle would want him to.
Outside, the Oxford spring continued. The River Cherwell flowed steadily past the school grounds. The red-brick houses stood quietly under the changing sky. And in a hospital room across the city, machines kept their steady rhythm while a family waited, held together by the unexpected maturity of a five-year-old boy who had decided that life, even when it hurt, still had to continue.