Chapter 50

Chapter 50

The moment Choi Yuri got home, she turned on her laptop.

What the director had told her not to do was gather sixteen people and start a fight.

So Yuri decided to do something different.

I'll just do it by myself!

She opened the registration page.

She created three accounts.

She already knew the promotion requirements.

She had raised her main account by two membership levels before.

Three days of attendance check-ins.

One introduction post.

Five comments.

The five comments could be left on other boards.

With the first account, she wrote an introduction.

[Hello. I recently moved to Somang Apartments. Nice to meet everyone.]

For the second account, she changed the wording slightly.

By the time she finished the third, it was one in the morning.

Yuri opened the original post again.

The comments had increased from eight to eighteen.

[I'd heard that hospital was good. Maybe not?]

Seeing comments like that made her angry.

***

The next morning, three appointments were canceled.

During lunch, Choi Yuri secretly opened the Daum café on the front-desk computer.

Using her main account, she found the post again.

The comment count had risen to twenty-five.

[The woman upstairs from me said the same thing.]

[Apparently everyone in the neighborhood knows about it.]

[I heard the doctor there is a woman. Does anyone know how much experience she actually has?]

Yuri tightened her grip on the mouse.

She could not reply.

Her new accounts were not high enough level.

The reply button itself was disabled.

That evening, she went home, checked in, and filled the five-comment requirement on other boards.

She commented on a used stroller listing.

[You kept it in good condition.]

On a baby-clothes giveaway post:

[Thank you.]

It did not take long.

The following night, her account was promoted.

Finally!

Yuri immediately replied beneath the original post.

[I'm actually a patient at that clinic. The mother you're talking about didn't die. She's alive and doing well with her baby.]

Within three minutes, five replies appeared.

The speed was so fast it was almost as though someone had been waiting.

[You're an employee, right?]

[The fact that you're defending them like this makes it even more suspicious.]

[Your account is brand new.]

[LOL.]

Yuri refreshed the page.

The twenty-five comments had already become thirty-seven.

"This is bad."

She logged into the second account and posted another defense of Hyundai OB-GYN.

That one was attacked within a minute.

The comment she posted with the third account was completely ignored.

Yuri's face turned red.

"Damn it."

That same night, Minseo finally saw the post.

She had been too exhausted from childcare.

Haneul woke up three times every night.

Two in the morning.

Four.

Six.

During the day, Minseo was constantly doing laundry because she insisted on using cloth diapers.

She had not checked the Daum café in four days.

She had no idea what had happened there during those four days.

Then, on the rare night when Haneul fell asleep early, Minseo sat at the kitchen table and opened her laptop.

It was exactly like the night three months ago when she had written her original review.

She mixed honey into warm milk, set the mug beside her, and started scrolling through the most popular posts.

Her hand stopped on the third one.

[Title: Please Be Careful if You Go to the OB-GYN Inside the Market Alley]

Minseo read it to the end.

Then she read the comments.

Then she scrolled back to the top and read the post again.

By the time her milk had gone cold, her fingers were trembling.

"They're openly trying to destroy the director's reputation. Who are these people?"

Minseo remembered the day she had come home crying after being told her breast might need to be removed.

She remembered writing a post.

Then she remembered returning from the clinic and writing another.

Hundreds of comments had accused her of being a paid advertiser.

She had spent a long time fighting back.

Now it was time to fight again.

[Title: I'm GounMom. I've Been Busy With My Baby and Only Saw This Today.]

[Apparently this post has been up for three days, but I only saw it today. My baby wakes up three times every night, so I haven't had time to visit the café.]

[I'm the person who came out of a university hospital after being told I needed breast removal. I wrote that review. I know a lot of people visited the clinic after reading my post, so I think I need to say this.]

[I'm breastfeeding my baby right now. I still have both breasts.]

[And to the person who wrote that a pregnant woman died, can you tell us which building and unit she lived in? I can give you my building and unit. Three months ago, when people accused me of being a paid advertiser, I revealed everything.]

[I have a baby to care for, so I can't reply often. But I will not delete this post.]

Minseo pressed Enter.

Then she closed the laptop and went into the bedroom.

She lay beside Haneul.

Thirty minutes later, she came back out and opened the laptop again.

The view count was already 1,200.

One hour later, Son Jeonga posted a new thread.

[I'm the person who once accused GounMom of being a paid advertiser.]

[Then I nearly died from mastitis and went to that clinic myself. It was in the middle of the night, and they still saw me.]

[To the people saying a pregnant woman died there, do you know her name? Her husband's name?]

[I'll give you mine. Son Jeonga.]

Forty comments appeared within fifteen minutes.

Twenty were hostile replies asking who Son Jeonga was and telling her not to defend a suspicious hospital.

The other twenty supported her.

Two hours passed.

Even though it was the middle of the night, the message board showed no sign of calming down.

Seventeen posts appeared with nearly identical titles.

Some copied the original accusation and rebutted it.

Others copied the rebuttal and rebutted that.

Some told both sides to stop.

Then those people were attacked for pretending to be neutral.

Posts began calling out specific usernames.

People demanded that IP addresses be revealed.

The argument from three months ago involving GounMom was dragged back into the discussion.

Lists began circulating of usernames that had accused her of being a paid advertiser back then.

***

"What is this mess?"

The café administrator, SomangMomJjang, woke up at four in the morning and discovered the situation.

Managing a café with more than thirty thousand members alone was exhausting.

If she deleted any post, she would have to explain why.

If she explained why, that explanation would simply create another fight.

What should she do?

At 6:20 a.m., SomangMomJjang finally made a decision.

[NOTICE: Posts and Comments About a Certain Hospital Are Now Prohibited]

[Recently, numerous unverified claims involving a particular hospital have been posted, causing serious conflict among members.]

[The hospital's name and similar expressions have now been registered as banned keywords. Related posts can no longer be created.]

[Existing related posts have been made private in bulk.]

[Please use the Local Hospital Board for general hospital recommendations.]

The banned keywords included not only the hospital's full name, but also its initials.

Even the phrase [inside the market alley] was banned.

GounMom's post disappeared.

All three of the reviews she had written back in March disappeared too.

The forty comments Son Jeonga had spent the night writing vanished.

The original accusation disappeared as well.

***

That morning, Minseo laid Haneul down and gently patted the baby's back twice.

Only after confirming that Haneul was fully asleep did she walk out on tiptoe.

Her left breast still felt slightly heavy.

The area that had been cut and drained three months earlier no longer hurt when touched, but after breastfeeding, a dull pulling sensation remained beneath it.

Minseo pressed her palm against it once, then let go.

The mug from last night was still sitting on the table.

A thin film had formed over the small amount of milk left at the bottom.

She pressed the laptop's power button.

The fan began spinning, warming the area beneath her wrist.

While waiting for the computer to boot, Minseo picked at her fingernails.

She had woken twice during the night.

Both times, she had thought the same thing.

How many comments are there now?

Are they calling me a paid advertiser again?

She already knew that if she endured three days of attacks, things would eventually calm down.

She opened the café.

"Huh?"

Her post was gone.

Minseo scrolled down.

Then again.

The post had reached 1,200 views the previous night, so it should still have been on the first page.

She refreshed.

The screen flashed white.

The same list appeared.

She entered yesterday's URL directly.

[This post has been deleted or does not exist.]

Her fingertips turned cold.

Minseo hit Back.

Then she saw the notice pinned at the top in red letters.

It took less than twenty seconds to read.

GounMom.

Minseo searched her own username.

The three posts from March were all gone.

The post she had written while crying after being told her breast might need removal.

The post she wrote after visiting Hyundai OB-GYN.

The update she posted one month later.

Women suffering from mastitis had found those posts while searching late at night.

Minseo had even met mothers in the clinic waiting room who told her they had come after reading her review.

She took her hand off the mouse and rested her elbows on the kitchen table.

Outside, dawn was brightening.

From the apartment below, the vibration of someone's washing machine traveled faintly through the wall.

Haneul whimpered in the bedroom.

Minseo closed the laptop and stood.

The chair legs scraped across the floor.

Maybe this is actually better.

She tried to convince herself.

From now on, she would simply recommend the clinic privately to people she trusted.

***

That same morning, Choi Yuri arrived at work after barely sleeping.

The front-desk computer took a while to start.

Yuri put her bag beneath the desk and waited for the monitor to brighten.

Behind her, Namgung Ju opened the steam sterilizer.

Hot steam burst out.

The damp smell of freshly sterilized cloth drifted all the way to the desk.

Yuri had slept only three hours.

She had kept refreshing the page until three in the morning.

Even after lying down, she had gotten back up once more to check.

Her eyelids felt as though sand had been rubbed beneath them.

What happened?

The first thing she wanted to check was what had happened to the comments she had written.

She watched Namgung Ju.

The moment Ju carried the sterilized cloths into the sterilization room, Yuri quickly logged into the café on the front-desk computer.

"Huh?"

The original post was gone.

Yuri scrolled.

She turned two pages searching for the place where her comments had been.

One hand gripped the mouse.

The other rested on the edge of the desk.

Her palm had grown sweaty enough that the wood grain felt slippery.

On the third page, she saw the notice.

After reading it, Yuri leaned back against the chair.

Her three accounts were now useless.

She had checked in for three days.

Written three different introduction posts.

Left multiple comments.

She had stayed awake until late at night doing all of it.

Now it had all vanished.

"Yuri, what are you looking at?"

Namgung Ju passed by carrying the sterilized cloths.

Steam still rose from them.

"...Nothing."

Yuri closed the browser.

As the desktop appeared, her own reflection showed faintly on the screen.

Dark circles sat beneath her eyes.

I should've just done what the director said.

For some reason, she felt deeply wronged.

***

Insook woke up at her home in Korea.

It was three in the morning.

She got up to use the bathroom but had to stop for a moment with one hand on the edge of the bed.

Standing made it feel as though her entire lower abdomen was being dragged upward.

When she sat on the toilet, only a small amount of urine came out.

The urge did not disappear.

It had been like this since Shanghai.

She woke three or four times every night.

Each time, only a little came out.

"Good grief."

Standing in front of the bathroom mirror, Insook placed a hand over her pajamas.

She could no longer clearly feel the line beneath her ribs.

It had always been prominent before.

With half her buttons still undone, she turned sideways.

Her arms had become thinner.

Her collarbones stuck out.

Only her abdomen protruded.

When she pressed with her palm, it almost felt as though something firm was inside.

The suit skirt she had worn during last month's Hong Kong trip no longer zipped all the way up.

Yet the matching jacket now slipped from her shoulders.

Insook looked away from the mirror.

"Haah... haah..."

By the time she returned to the bedroom and sat down, she was short of breath.

When she tried lying flat, her abdomen pressed upward toward her chest and made breathing even harder.

Insook added another pillow and shifted into a half-sitting position.

She had to be at the Seoul office by nine.

The contract was signed.

Only the inspection schedule remained.

The raw materials were already in the warehouse.

She still had to arrange Hong Kong's next-season shipment.

Once I finish this job, maybe I'll ask Eunjae.

Insook looked at herself in the mirror.

The area beneath her eyes looked hollow.

No.

I'll just make my niece worry for nothing.

I'll get some herbal medicine and feel better.