A New Use for the Crazy Doctor

Peep! Peep! The tiny cries snapped So-yul's eyes wide open. Inside the fence put up to keep the dogs out, two pairs of yellow chicks were toddling about, and she hurried over at once to stroke the chirping little things.

"Aigo, they're so cute. Dr. Kang, your house really is an animal farm."

"Back row, number 023. Shall I text it to you as well?"

"Oh, honestly. Are you going to keep teasing me? I told you, I'm not coming!"

"You look like a child afraid the zoo is about to close. And I'm meant to say nothing and leave you behind?"

He was the very last man you would expect to understand a joke, and yet the exchange volleyed back and forth with ridiculous ease.

"But seriously, where did the chicks actually come from?"

"I picked them up off the street on my way home, just after I got back into the country. There must have been a hole in some chick vendor's box. Absurd as it sounds, there they were, peeping and toddling all over the sidewalk."

"Ooh. That really is incredible."

"I searched and searched for an owner and never found one, so I put them in my pocket and brought them home."

The image rose unbidden: Kang Dae-han scooping wandering chicks up in both hands and tucking them into his pocket. A laugh escaped her, a stifled little pfft. Every defense she had was completely disarmed by the cuteness of it, and in that state she stepped into Kang Dae-han's house beside him.

"Whoa……."

For a house of its size, the interior was startlingly bare. The garden had been tended with meticulous care for the animals; the inside, if she were honest, was a place where human warmth was hard to come by. A sofa so untouched she doubted anyone had ever sat on it, not a speck of dust anywhere, and a wall without a single television. Only the bookshelf was full, packed solid with medical texts.

"Wait here a moment."

"Yes!"

Something urgent must have come up. Phone in hand, he headed for the second floor, and she was left standing stock-still in the living room, watching him go. She had turned to the floor-to-ceiling window, brilliant sunlight pouring through the glass, when Squish and Beancake set to scratching furiously at the door and barking.

"You hungry? Want a treat?"

Bewitched by the two little fur-balls, she eased the window open. That was all it took.

"Ah—no, don't—!"

Sure enough. The little troublemakers came barreling in, and pristine marble and carpet were filthy with paw prints in seconds. Opening the door had done nothing but make a nuisance of her, so she chased their hindquarters, desperate to head them off. The dogs made for a room without the slightest hesitation, and So-yul went in after them. There was a bed. A bedroom, then.

"Hss—you really cannot get up there."

They could not have cared less. Paw prints stamped themselves across the snow-white sheets as the dogs scrambled up, and she clutched her head.

That was when it happened. Something rattled out of a case on the bedroom nightstand and hit the floor.

Her mind went perfectly blank as she read the words printed on the square foil packets. The instant she understood that the things were condoms—not one, not a handful, but easily more than fifty—she scrambled to scoop them up. She may have laid eyes on Dr. Kang's crazy peach of a penis, but rummaging through his private life felt like a line she had no business crossing.

And why, of all things, were there so many? Well. A face that could seduce women by the truckload, and an aura that poured out testosterone even when he stood perfectly still—of course he'd have occasion to use them. ……But did a woman capable of actually taking something that enormous even exist? I'm a doctor, and yet this is where I run smack into the mystery of the human body.

"Dr. Ong. Stealing condoms—what exactly were you planning to do with them?"

"Ack—!"

Perhaps it was because her thoughts had been anything but pure. At the sound of Kang Dae-han's voice behind her, So-yul startled so hard she sat down flat on the floor. To make matters worse, Squish and Beancake clamped the fallen condoms in their mouths, fetched them over like toys, and deposited them neatly on top of her pants.

"Woof! Woof!"

One. Two. Three. She watched her own lap vanish beneath the pile and could not produce so much as an excuse. So this is how a brand-new pervert reputation gets its upgrade. Haah. What am I supposed to do about my image. Seriously.

"Squish. Beancake. Not there. Put them in order over there and sit. Execute!"

"Arf!"

"Arf!"

She still could not bring herself to look up. The fur-balls had been outrageously deaf to every other word, and yet they took their master's command like a blade—instant, exact. They set the condoms on the box, sat like model students, and turned the sweetest, most obedient eyes up at him.

Those little puffballs. I swear.

"You really are remarkable in every possible way, Dr. Kang. Haha. The absolute best."

Casting about for something to say, So-yul had settled on sheer brazenness, and she looked up at him with both thumbs hoisted high. No one could spit at a smiling face, and praise, as the saying went, could set even a whale to dancing. Better, then, not to squirm over what was already done, and simply applaud until they both felt better. She lowered her thumbs and went so far as to clap—clap, clap—and the man abruptly caught a condom wrapper in his teeth and tore it open. Zzrip.

"Then shall we try putting that impressive man's to use?"

Oh my God.

It was the moment the master of the animal farm was reborn as a beast.

Who am I, and where is this?

Kang Dae-han's room was fitted out nearly to the standard of a laboratory. So-yul blinked at the condoms strewn across the table. For a moment she seriously considered driving a kick into the solar plexus of the man who had just asked whether she wanted to try using the impressive one's.

At the words that followed, she had lowered the fist she had been clenching. Condom box in hand, she had come into the room the master of the house led her to.

"Dr. Ong. Be honest with me. You were about to hit me just now, weren't you?"

Kang Dae-han said it as he opened a condom and squeezed a long ribbon of ultrasound gel inside. His lowered lashes were so long they cast a deep shadow beneath his eyes. From a distance he was nothing but raw testosterone; up close, the handsomeness was as fine and delicate as a watercolor.

Ah, Ong So-yul, that is enough. Why do you keep staring, utterly gone, at MacGyver Fellow's face?

So-yul shook her head to collect herself and met his gaze head-on, the very picture of spotless innocence.

"Me? Not even a little?"

"You were looking at me like some shameless scoundrel who'd dragged a woman home because he wanted to roll around with her. Am I mistaken?"

She had thought exactly that—for all of a tenth of a second. Trust a former soldier to throw it straight down the middle.

"I know I'm not devastating enough to seduce you, Dr. Kang. I can see myself clearly enough for that."

"Then that clarity of yours needs work. You're oblivious."

"Pardon?"

"You're attractive enough to do the seducing, Dr. Ong."

"Oh, so you're the guardian of my self-esteem? Thank you. You'll be blessed for that."

So-yul batted the inscrutable compliment back with cheerful ease and, exactly as instructed, slipped a small peeled grape into the condom.

"Now put the thread and the straw in."

Following his direction, she pushed a very fine straw and a length of white thread down into the ultrasound gel. He must have done this many times. With practiced hands he knotted the mouth of the condom shut, switched on the portable ultrasound in the workroom, and laid the probe against it. The moment the black-and-white image appeared, So-yul's eyes flew wide.

"Wow, this is perfect for practicing procedures, isn't it? The grape is muscle tissue, the straw's a blood vessel, and the thread's a nerve, right? On ultrasound it looks remarkably close to the real thing."

What Dae-han had meant by expanding their medical thinking with a condom was procedure practice. It was essential for treating tendons and muscle, or for placing injections in a shoulder or a knee, and the work was so exacting that it demanded a great deal of practice. Kang Dae-han, who had gathered every kind of experience on distant battlefields, seemed to have led an astonishing range of training workshops as well. Whether it was that steady, trustworthy history or simply the chance to practice something new, her heart gave a sudden hard kick.

"Hold it, and stick it in."

Dae-han said it as he passed her the ultrasound probe and a needle. Maybe it was because he was watching. Throat tight, So-yul swallowed, held the probe and needle in-plane, and slowly pierced the condom. A line appeared on the screen where the needle entered, and in time with it she eased the angle by the smallest degrees. She tried to close in on the grape standing in for muscle, but the thread and the straw kept blocking her approach.

"This way."

That was when Dae-han took her hand and turned the angle for her. He had drawn so near that his warmth, and the sound of his breathing, reached her from no distance at all. Tension seized her for no reason she could name. She swallowed against a dry throat and, just barely, drove the needle into the space beside the grape.

"That's a success, isn't it? It is, right?"

So-yul turned to Dae-han, her face breaking into a brilliant smile. They were so close that she watched, in real time, as his expression slowly went hard.

What on earth was bothering him now?