Love and Sneezes

“S-Sir?”

“Yes, it's me. Is falling flat on your face your specialty? Is shrieking your head off a hobby?”

“Ugh... what is that supposed to mean...”

In the man's free hand — the one that wasn't holding So-yul — hung a full-body anatomy model.

“Is this an orthopedic surgeon's first time seeing a skeleton?”

“In a pitch-black room like this? Absolutely. I honestly thought someone was shooting a horror movie in here...”

At that, the man chuckled and steadied her back onto her feet. As though his eyes had adjusted to the darkness, the room stood out more sharply than before — Dae-han had a portable lantern clipped to his forehead.

“So what are you doing here at this hour of the night?”

The outpatient X-ray room went largely unused after dark. With the ER and the inpatient wards fitted with their own imaging equipment, the outpatient wing was the only place in the hospital that went completely dark once night fell.

Which made the man lugging an anatomy model around all the more puzzling.

“The professors said they were done with this skeleton, so I was carrying it back to the office to stow it. As for the lantern...”

He trailed off with a sheepish snort, as if he found the whole thing absurd himself. “I lost my phone — been searching for it. I think I dropped it around here on my way to the outpatient clinic, but no matter how many times I look, it's gone. The fluorescents in my office have gone out too, so I can't even get in.”

“To think even you lose things like some absent-minded klutz.”

So-yul beamed, feeling an odd surge of camaraderie. Looking down at that radiant smile, the man's expression stiffened.

Ah. So we're not on bantering terms, are we.

“If you can't find it, shall I help you look? I never got to run your errand today, after all.”

“Ah. That.”

The man unclipped the lantern from his forehead, cupped it in his hand, and raked the light back through his buzz cut. The glow threw shadows across his face, making his chiseled features stand out even more sharply.

“I was thinking we'd at least grab dinner together after work.”

Oh. So that's what it was. For all his size, sir is scared of plenty — and lonely plenty, too.

He was the one who occasionally sent her on errands down to the staff cafeteria, so So-yul nodded along. “I guess you don't like eating alone.”

“I like eating alone, actually. They say even a dog won't disturb you at mealtimes, but there's nothing on this earth I despise more than someone yammering nonstop through an entire meal.”

“...”

Doctor, I've yammered your ear off an awful lot around you, haven't I... Did that bother you?

“You're the exception, Dr. Ong.”

“Why?”

“Very...”

Brow creased, he seemed to be weighing whether to go on, his eyes fixed on her face.

“Very... what?”

“You look good enough to eat. The kind of face that stirs an appetite a man never knew he had.”

Somehow the remark felt loaded with meaning, yet there wasn't a whiff of teasing in it. If anything, his matter-of-fact tone left her scrambling for a response.

“Hahaha! Oh, is, is that so! Th-then why don't we find your phone and grab something to eat? There's a twenty-four-hour hangover soup place nearby — I broke my promise to you today, so dinner's on me!”

“What are you going to treat me to with pocket change? Dr. Ong, quit nibbling at your food and just scrape your soup bowl clean for once. I have never once seen you finish a meal.”

The words were unmistakably tender; the delivery, rough as gravel. No tsundere alive could hold a candle to him. The more she heard it, though, the more it almost felt familiar. A laugh rose up in her out of nowhere, and So-yul flashed a wide smile as she walked toward the door.

“That hangover soup place is seriously delici... huh?”

So-yul heaved at the heavy steel door of the radiology room, but it wouldn't give an inch — like shoving a slab of concrete.

“Why won't it open?”

“Step aside.”

Dae-han shouldered in front of her and shoved the lead-lined door with all his strength, but it was useless.

Why was it only now that Ahn Hae-young's words from that evening came flashing back to her?

“Doctor, I think we're locked in. And the phone...”

“...”

Phoneless, the two of them found each other's eyes in the dark. The man's gaze looked utterly unbothered.

“Achoo!”

The sneeze had exploded out of nowhere, and So-yul hadn't stood a chance of holding it in.

“I think I've caught a cold.”

He hadn't reacted in the slightest to the news that they were trapped — yet her sneeze drew a far sharper response.

“Achoo.”

At his wits' end, Dae-han finally pressed the tail end of his own tie to her nose.

“Locked in is locked in — that part can wait.”

“...?”

“Go on. Sniff.”

Startled by the sudden maneuver, So-yul yanked her small head backward. She could hardly turn into some snotty-nosed brat dribbling all over her senior fellow's tie.

“A-a-achoo!”

But then, as the saying goes, love and sneezes cannot be hidden. She tried to dam the sneezes bursting out one after another, yet there was no stopping her round little nose from flaring scarlet.

And at the sight of it, Dae-han's expression turned colder than a Siberian gale. His single-lidded eyes, sharp as slits, scrunched up as he glared down at her savagely.

“I'm sorry, sir — it's my rhinitis...”

His intimidating aura had the apology out of her mouth before she knew it, but—

“Dr. Ong So-yul, may I ask you one thing?”

The question came at her out of the blue.

“Yes! Anything at all!”

“What does it feel like, being that cute?”

“Ex-cuse me?”

“It's always frustrated me, wanting to ask my pets things and having the words go nowhere. So since you happen to look the part, I'm asking you. Are you aware that you're cute?”

She wanted to fire back — You're asking what kind of dog-bone nonsense with a face that serious and that terrifying? — but one does not say such things to the supervisor standing right in front of her.

“If it's about pets... am I perhaps a little... dog-like? I do bark pretty well when things get urgent in the ER, hahaha.”

“I do keep a dog, but no — a chick. Dr. Ong, you look exactly like the chick I've got at home.”

“Oh my — you raise a cheeping little baby chick, Dr. Kang?”

A man with that terrifying face, raising a fist-sized chick? She couldn't picture it to save her life.

“...Don't tell me you're raising it to eat it?”

“How could anyone eat it? The damn thing is so cute that even just looking at it feels like a waste.”

As he finished speaking, his gaze came to rest on So-yul. For an instant, his rigid lips twitched — then curled upward.

And with it, the scar beneath his cheekbone sank deep, folding in like an Indian dimple.

Whoa. What is this?

You know that sensation, don't you? The moment skin frozen stiff touches something hot, and the temperature gap sets it tingling all at once.

That was So-yul, right now. At Dae-han's smile, the tip of her nose began to itch — and the sneeze burst out of her before she could stop it.

“A-a-achoo!”

“Here. Let it out on this.”

The tie was back before she knew it, and this time she couldn't turn it away.

“Huh?”

There she was, nose buried shamelessly in his clean, soap-scented tie. The instant the realization hit, her hand shot out first.

“Take it off, sir. I'll wa-wash it for you!”

So-yul whipped the tie right off the man's neck. The tug pulled his dress shirt — already a few buttons loose — wide open, laying bare the full sweep of his deltoid.

Good lord. The man's body was etched with muscle like an illustration torn from an anatomy atlas.

Confronted with that rock-solid frame — hardly an ounce of fat to be found on it — So-yul's mouth fell open.

“I knew full well you had a hobby of undressing people, but now you'll do my laundry, too? Dr. Ong, do you enjoy watching men burst and die? You're one fucking cruel person.”

Dae-han asked it with zero-filter bluntness. It was a parade of provocative words, yet his voice sounded less lewd than strangely matter-of-fact.

“N-no, I'm not! I'll cure these damn hands of mine and atone in a full-body cast! Please don't get the wrong idea, sir!”

After all, she was the guilty party here — the one who'd stripped him this way and that and then stood around admiring the view. An apology was the least she owed.

“Anyway, I really will get this washed and return it to you!”

So-yul folded the tie, tucked it hurriedly into her gown pocket, and backed away a step. Only then did it strike her, all over again, just how close she was standing to him. Darkness hemmed them in on every side, and the only thing to hold on to was the flashlight in Dae-han's hand — which somehow made it all the more acute.

“...”

Made awkward by his silence, So-yul found herself glancing down at her wristwatch just for something to do. “Wow, look at the time, though. When does the security guard make his rounds? If we hear footsteps, we can just bang on the door, right?”

“Dr. Ong, is something urgent?”

He asked while watching her fidget like a puppy dying to pee.

“My mom's going to worry.”

“Your mother?”

“When she's not on night duty, she won't sleep — she stays up waiting for me. Says it's dangerous, being out so late.”

“Can't say I blame her.”

Dae-han, having uttered something impossible to read, suddenly began striding toward the door.

What followed was a sight that could only be called shocking. The man — gown shed, fist wrapped — started raining blows down on the handle.

BAM! BAM! CRACK!

Three blows was all it took. The mangled handle dropped away with a clatter.

Her jaw hung open — it was like a scene straight out of the The Outlaws film series, that moment when the stone-fisted hero peels a door clean off its hinges like it's nothing. Though if anything, Dae-han's looks leaned closer to the villain — devastatingly handsome and magnetic — than to the hero.

“Your mother's waiting, isn't she? Let's get moving.”

With a creak, the man swung the steel door wide open and tipped his head to one side.

So-yul walked through the door he'd split open like the Red Sea, looking for all the world like someone under a spell.