Fifth Vital [EN]: Chapter 121

Five Vital Signs – Episode 121

121. Pavlov’s Dog

“Excuse me?”

As Kim Jin-kyung grabbed Lee Dong-gyu’s arm and turned toward the subway exit, a middle-aged woman suddenly seized Kim Jin-kyung’s wrist.

In that instant, the sleeve slid up due to the middle-aged woman’s grip, revealing the scar underneath.

“Oh my, look at that!”

The middle-aged woman’s eyes sparkled as if she had found the perfect prey. She slowly moved her gaze from the scar to Kim Jin-kyung, then asked with a sly smile,

“You seem to be having a hard time in life, dear? We can help you…”

Taken aback by the brazen and rude attitude, Kim Jin-kyung was interrupted by the younger woman beside her, who continued without missing a beat.

“You have a very kind face, but I can see a lot of anger and resentment in your heart. We can teach you how to purify your heart while we talk.”

“Heh! Haha!”

Kim Jin-kyung, who had been listening to the woman, suddenly burst into laughter.

“Purify my heart?”

After laughing, Kim Jin-kyung retorted,

“How are you going to purify my heart?”

“By listening to good words, practicing them, and gathering together to pray and share our worries and strength…”

“Isn’t that about deceiving people with sweet talk, finding new prey to convert like you’re doing now under the guise of practicing, and trying to extract all their money under the pretense of praying?”

“…!”

“No, what are you talking about?”

As the younger woman panicked and couldn’t say anything, the middle-aged woman quickly tried to smooth things over.

“You must have misunderstood. We’re just a small group sharing uplifting messages. Not some strange…”

“Isn’t that exactly what you are, a strange cult?”

“A c-cult? How can you say such a thing? We’ve been very rude.”

Flustered by Kim Jin-kyung’s blunt and refreshing words, the two women couldn’t say anything more and moved away.

“Were you surprised?”

“Ah, no.”

Lee Dong-gyu, who had never seen Kim Jin-kyung get angry, laugh, or talk much, was slightly taken aback.

He wondered why she was so serious about people who were always around.

“More importantly, Jin-kyung, are you alrigh…!”

Lee Dong-gyu, who was asking Kim Jin-kyung without showing his surprise, stopped mid-sentence.

Unlike her resolute expression and tone, Kim Jin-kyung’s hands were trembling like aspen leaves.

“Jin-kyung, sit here for a moment. I’ll be right back, so don’t go anywhere.”

Lee Dong-gyu led Kim Jin-kyung to a bench right behind them, then rushed to the convenience store across the street and returned with a bottle of water.

“Here, drink some water.”

“Yes…”

Kim Jin-kyung took out her prescribed tranquilizer from her bag and took it with water.

“Thank you.”

“You’re welcome. More importantly, you seemed very shaken. Are you okay?”

“I’m okay. I think you were more surprised than I was, Dong-gyu?”

“Ah! This?”

Kim Jin-kyung held out her hand, which was still trembling slightly, and continued,

“You could say I’m like Pavlov’s dog.”

“Pardon?”

“You know what Pavlov’s dog is, right?”

“You mean the dog that reacts to the sound of a bell?”

“Yes.”

Pavlov’s dog was a classic example of classical conditioning, where a dog would salivate at the sound of a bell because it had been conditioned to associate the bell with food.

“Those cult members who spoke to Dong-gyu earlier, or rather, tried to convert you, are like Pavlov’s dog to me.”

“…?”

“Just seeing those people makes my blood boil. My family was ruined because of a cult. My mom is deeply devoted to one.”

“…!”

Lee Dong-gyu didn’t know how to react to the shocking statement.

“People at the company have a lot of questions for me, right? Why don’t I ever attend company dinners? Why do I always look so gloomy? Why can’t I get along with others? Do I really have depression or something?”

Kim Jin-kyung knew all the things people at the company said about her. Some of them were ridiculous, but she ignored them because life was too hard to respond to each one.

“It’s all because of my mom. She became obsessed with a cult and let her illness grow. Now she’s in the hospital with terminal cancer.”

Kim Jin-kyung herself didn’t know why she was telling Lee Dong-gyu this embarrassing fact that she couldn’t even bring herself to say to others. However, seeing the cult members on her way home from work had stirred up her frustrated and stifled feelings, and she couldn’t calm down easily.

If she didn’t vent these feelings now, she felt like her chest would explode.

“You must have had a very hard time.”

Lee Dong-gyu said, offering words of comfort. And now he understood why her expression always looked so lonely and depressed.

“I don’t know. I think being miserable has become a part of my life. I was actually jealous of Dong-gyu whenever I saw you.”

“Of me?”

“Yes. Sometimes when I hear you talking to your family on the way home, or when you buy snacks for your sister like today, I get envious.”

“I see. By the way, how did your mother get into that…”

Becoming curious, Lee Dong-gyu asked very cautiously.

“She was approached by people who pair up and proselytize [attempt to convert someone to a religion or belief] in the neighborhood.”

Kim Jin-kyung was often reminded of her happy family when she saw Lee Dong-gyu.

A caring father, a kind and warm mother, and a playful younger brother. Like any other family, her family was ordinary.

In particular, her mother was a loving person who took good care of her family. Her mother changed after meeting a cult that went around the neighborhood proselytizing.

Initially, they got to know her by talking about everyday things, and then they gradually and subtly approached her.

Whether she was taking out the trash in front of her house, buying groceries at a nearby mart, or returning from an outing, they planned everything to win her over under the guise of coincidence.

Her mother, who had repeatedly refused and waved them off, gradually listened to their absurd kindness and friendly tactics.

Something that she had only seen on TV was happening to her family. Something that she had only thought of as a story in a movie or drama was happening to her family.

Her mother, who used to say that only people with weak wills would fall for such things, became more deeply involved than anyone else.

‘Mom, are you going out again?’

‘Yes. I have a meeting.’

‘What kind of meeting?’

‘Just a women’s gathering.’

‘You had a women’s gathering last month.’

‘There’s a good reason to meet again this time. I’ll be back.’

Her mother went out more and more often, and the family believed her plausible reasons. And by the time the family found out, her mother was already so deeply involved that she couldn’t see or hear anything else.

“I don’t know much about it since I haven’t experienced it myself, but after watching a documentary about cults, I realized that the families suffer terribly.”

“That’s right. The rest of the family is in so much pain.”

The family’s suffering and mental anguish are indescribable unless you’ve experienced it yourself.

“After my family fell apart, an acquaintance told me, ‘Can’t your family get your mom out of there?'”

“It’s easier said than done. It doesn’t seem easy to get someone out of that group.”

“I even took a leave of absence from college, and my dad used up his vacation days, and we were constantly looking for my mom on the weekends. It was a mess.”

Kim Jin-kyung went with her father to the religious facility where her mother was staying every weekend, but it was all in vain.

Her mother, whose ideology had been ingrained in her bones, prioritized the religion she had fallen into over her family.

“Even if we reported it to the police, they said it was a religious matter, so it was difficult to intervene and there was nothing they could do.”

“It seems like the country doesn’t intervene much in religious matters.”

“That’s right. Because it’s a free democratic country and there’s freedom of religion, the police said it would be difficult to take my mom out unless there was a major incident.”

So Kim Jin-kyung, instead of her younger sibling who was a student, went with her father to find her mother again, but her mother got angry at her family for not understanding her.

‘Mom, please come back.’

‘Honey! Get a grip!’

‘Why don’t you understand me? Huh? Honey, Jin-kyung, let’s be together. Huh? You’re all tainted by Satan.’

Tired of her mother in the same old routine, her father was transferred to a 지방 [local] area and went down with her younger sibling.

Kim Jin-kyung, who was a college student at the time, had done all she could and, at her father’s suggestion to stop, forgot about her mother and focused on her school life.

She didn’t have the confidence to handle her mother, who was showing firsthand that there was no hope once someone fell into a cult.

So Kim Jin-kyung erased her mother from her mind in order to survive.

“It was too hard. So I deliberately tried not to think about my mom.”

“I think I understand how you feel.”

Lee Dong-gyu, who had been listening to Kim Jin-kyung, didn’t think her choice was wrong. He felt sorry for her, wondering how hard and tired she must have been.

“I thought my mom was doing well. I thought she was doing well in that group she liked so much, and I returned to my daily life. But just when my mind was starting to stabilize, my mom came back.”

“Your mother came back herself?”

“Yes, she suddenly came home one day. My dad came up right away after hearing the news.”

Her mother, who had been staying at the facility for a long time and couldn’t be reached, returned home as if by magic.

The family thought that her mother had finally come to her senses, but the words her mother said that day were still etched in Kim Jin-kyung’s mind.

‘I have cancer. Early-stage breast cancer.’

Yu Ji-cheon had returned to her family with an illness.

‘What!? Is that true?’

‘Mom, then we should go to the hospital tomorrow and schedule the surgery.’

‘Yes, let’s go to the hospital tomorrow as Jin-kyung said. Your health is the priority. Let’s get treatment first. Okay?’

‘Of course, I’ll get treatment. Our Jin 선생님 [Teacher Jin] will treat me, so don’t worry too much.’

‘Honey!’

‘Mom! What are you talking about?’

‘Only Teacher Jin can heal me. He can do everything.’

Her mother firmly believed that a man named Teacher Jin, the leader of the cult, would heal her. No one could break that belief.

And that day, when the family’s guard was down, she left home again in the early morning and hid in that group.

From then on, Kim Jin-kyung’s life collapsed rapidly.

Yu Ji-cheon, who had hidden in the cult facility, would return when she wasn’t feeling well. Kim Jin-kyung would take her to the emergency room or admit her to the hospital each time, but Yu Ji-cheon would always run away at any chance she got.

After repeating such a painful routine, Yu Ji-cheon, who had evaporated like smoke again, returned only after her whole body was battered.

“But I think that’s what family is like. Even if you try to cut ties, it’s not easy.”

“Of course.”

“One day, I was so tired that I thought, ‘I wish my mom was a bad mom. If she was, I would have given up a long time ago.’ My mom was a really good mom. That’s why I can’t give up on her.”

“You’re a very strong person.”

“No. It’s because she’s my mom… Because she raised me well, I just think I have to protect her until the end.”

Kim Jin-kyung resented and resented her mother in her heart. She was human, so it was true that she hated her mother, even though she was family. But now that her mother didn’t have much time left to live, she felt more sorry for her.

“It’s presumptuous of me to say, but I hope your mother spends the rest of her time comfortably, talking to you a lot and having a good time.”

“Me too. I want to, but it’s not easy. I have only one wish right now, and that’s to go on a trip with my mom. I’ve never been on a trip with her.”

“I hope that wish comes true.”

“Thank you. And thank you so much for listening to me today.”

Kim Jin-kyung was sincerely grateful to Lee Dong-gyu for listening to her unpleasant story.

“You’re welcome. I’m more grateful. And tell me whenever you feel frustrated. I’m good at listening.”

Lee Dong-gyu felt sorry for Kim Jin-kyung, who was in a difficult situation. He just wanted to give her some small amount of strength.

“Dong-gyu, I’ll go now.”

“Okay. Go quickly. Be careful.”

“Yes, go in.”

Kim Jin-kyung said goodbye to Lee Dong-gyu and headed to Our Hospital, where her mother was.

The box containing the red bean bread, which still had a warm temperature, seemed to soothe her cold heart a little.