Kang Dae-han's Animal Farm

Early that morning, So-yul's eyes opened to the chime of one message alert after another.

The sender was a senior from Neurosurgery, a man so skinny everyone called him the Anchovy. He had trailed at her heels all through the department dinner, making a thorough nuisance of himself, and now he wouldn't even leave her day off in peace. Worse, he kept calling himself oppa. Had he thrown the title of doctor in the trash entirely, as if the two of them weren't colleagues?

"Yes. Yes. Block him completely."

So-yul blacklisted the Anchovy's number without a moment's hesitation.

Perhaps it was the baby face—those round eyes, features none too strongly drawn, the sort of look that brought a panelist on a children's program to mind. She seemed easy to approach. In truth she was straight as a bamboo stalk: yes meant yes, and no meant no.

"That's exactly you. A savage thing with a brutal aura, stuffed into a cute little animal costume. The type people get soft for because you seem like the little sister next door—and then they get hurt. That's why I like you, Ong-ong. You're nothing like me."

It was something her classmate Ahn Hae-young said as if it were a catchphrase. For all her flashy, fierce looks, Hae-young was soft inside and easily shaken, and whenever worry found her she leaned hard on So-yul. So-yul, for her part, preferred a clean certainty to any relationship left dragging without end. Yes was yes; no was no. A little regrettably, in matters of love the answer was always the latter—one hundred percent of the time. After a certain incident, she had made up her mind that she would never date again.

"Ugh! Maybe I should just get up!"

She briefly considered begging for a little more of that honeyed sleep, but the drowsiness had already fled. She washed up lightly and changed into her workout clothes.

"How long has it even been since I went for a run?"

She followed the road at a steady clip, then turned toward Hangang Park, where the mere sight of the river seemed to open her lungs.

"Hahh—hah—hah. What is wrong with my stamina?"

She had wanted to skim along light and refreshed, the way people did on television, but reality left her winded at the slightest effort. Seated on a bench, patting the knots out of her shins, she scolded herself. If I'm going to gasp like this, I really have to start coming out here more often.

"Hello!"

Two muzzled Siberian huskies came up beside her. Instinctively, So-yul crouched in front of the bench so she could meet the dogs at eye level. Dainty little name tags hung from their collars: one read Shiba, the other Ski. Shiba and Ski—goodness. Say those names out loud and the congestion would slide right out of your chest. Pure refreshment.

"Aww, aww, out for a walk, are we?"

Large dogs, and only large dogs, disarmed her completely. They brought back General, the mutt who had crossed the rainbow bridge a few years ago. She had raised him tied in front of the shop from the time she was small, and whenever a nightmare customer appeared he would boom them off with a deep, furious bark. There were times he had driven off her father, too—the man who, once he drank, beat her mother and her without mercy. She could still see it, clear as anything: herself, fighting to keep General when her father tried to sell him off to a dog dealer.

I miss you, our General.

"How old are they?"

So-yul asked the owner, stroking Shiba's and Ski's necks without a second thought. The dogs were so full of affection she never even found a moment to look at whoever held the leashes.

"Over thirty."

"Wow, they really have lived a long time. Wait—did you just say the dogs are over thirty?"

She jerked her head up in surprise, and her eyes refused to open properly—not because of the blinding sun, but because of a blinding man. Then, as the silhouette gradually sharpened, So-yul stared and her mouth fell open.

The man standing there massive, the leashes gripped in his hand, was none other than Kang Dae-han. He wore a black woven set with sneakers to match; even dressed lightly, the charisma rolling off him was tremendous. The moment she realized, a beat too late, that it was Dae-han, So-yul shot to her feet. It hardly helped. The difference in their heights meant her eyes still couldn't meet his.

"Not curious about my age? Only the dog's?"

All at once the man folded deeply at the waist, bringing his gaze level with hers in a straight line.

"I've been curious about any number of things myself."

"..."

"Dr. Ong. Have you eaten?"

The question came in so directly that So-yul swallowed on a dry throat. At Kang Dae-han's words she shook her head—then spoke first, with a resolve that outpaced even his.

"If you haven't eaten either, Dr. Kang, then today's meal is on me!"

"You say we're eating, so why is that tiny fist clenched? Off to hit someone?"

Without realizing it she had dropped into a fighting stance, and Kang Dae-han, who never let a thing like that slide, unfolded her fist with his own hand as he asked. Even at a glance the difference in the size of their hands was stark. The orthopedic MacGyver who had cut his way through the military seemed extraordinary in his hands as well. Imagining those hands performing a debridement and an ORIF—open reduction and internal fixation—on a gunshot patient sent a thrill straight through her.

She wanted to grow close to him. She wanted to learn. She wanted to beat the seniors who had dismissed her—what's a woman doing in orthopedic surgery?—and to become a doctor who proved herself by skill, not by the volume of her voice. More and more, she was certain Kang Dae-han could be that guide.

"I heard you're the benefactor who saved both my brother and me. I was so grateful I wanted to buy you a meal away from the hospital. What do you feel like eating?"

Kang Dae-han watched So-yul as the words spilled out of her in a bright chatter. She tipped her head at the man who always answered a beat late, eyes that gave nothing of his thoughts away. In the meantime Shiba and Ski had settled in a circle at her feet. As if she carried some familiar scent, they rubbed their fluffy faces against her shoes, almost as if they were coaxing her to take them along wherever the two of them went to eat.

"As you can see, I'm a man with something tied to him. A restaurant doesn't seem possible. How about that place?"

"Where?"

"My house."

Kang Dae-han's house was exactly like Kang Dae-han.

It was a two-story home set a little off the main alley of Itaewon-dong. From the gray-and-white exterior on, it was imposing, and the design was cleanliness itself.

"There are more of them. Aigoo, and who are you two?"

The moment she stepped into the garden, So-yul's tongue snapped clean in half. Two young puppies, the very image of Shiba and Ski, were wagging their tails in welcome.

"As you can see, it's a happy marriage."

"Oh—they're Shiba and Ski's babies. Hello, hello. What are their names?"

"This one is Squishy. That one is Beancake."

Squishy was the one with Shiba's white coat and pale-brown patches; Beancake, taking after Ski, was patched in gray.

"They are so affectionate."

"I'm not sure that's yours to say."

Catching the man's meaning a beat late, So-yul rolled smooth again the tongue their cuteness had chopped in two.

"Ahem. But Dr. Kang, you haven't been back in the country very long, have you? Were these two with you overseas as well?"

"No. I brought the ones that were at the family home."

"Ah, the family home... When you're busy, Dr. Kang, who looks after the dogs?"

So-yul was not, as a rule, much interested in other people, but when it came to dogs she was different. Perhaps because she had raised one herself, the questions multiplied—and knowing he was the sort of man who took voluntary on-call shifts at Taemun Hospital as casually as eating a meal, they came stringing out of her like sausages. Huskies take more looking after than General ever did. They'll need walking all the time.

"A man who discharged after serving under me sees to their care full-time. He was a military working-dog handler, so he can be trusted. I watch them on the cameras as well."

"I see. Even so, you must miss them while you're on duty. I only just met them, and I can't take my eyes off them."

"Then come often. You may come when I'm not here. I'll give you the passcode—write it down, or memorize it. 32..."

She waved him off in a flurry as he prepared, with perfect calm, to hand her the code to his own front door.

"N-no, Dr. Kang. Even so—how am I supposed to just drop in on a man's house whenever I like, when the owner isn't even home?"

"Am I some other man to you, Dr. Ong?"

"Then what, you're a woman? Of course you're a man!"

"That's a relief. Go on seeing me as a man."

"Doc. Seriously. Jokes are forbidden."

"So you do know how to scold. Fiercely, too."

Kang Dae-han let out a short breath of a laugh, and the corner of his mouth curved exactly like a hook.

There he goes again, smiling in that way that itches the tip of my nose. So-yul barely held down the sneeze threatening to burst free and got to her feet.

"Come here. I'll show you the mirror effect."

Kang Dae-han took her lightly by the wrist and started toward the backyard of the house.