Because You're Mine
Ong So-yul's eyes, set like jewels, blinked up at Dae-han. Instinctively, he found he could not look away.
Yes. Maybe it had been like this from the very start.
Every time I place a Foley catheter, I see more male genitals than I can count. So, sir—don't be embarrassed. Just take them off.
The sheer, shameless determination to save a patient, and nothing but a doctor doing her work.
I'm sorry, Doctor. I was in such a rush that day I never managed a proper apology. I'm truly sorry, once again.
The way she didn't hide, even when she had every reason to be mortified, and apologized from the heart.
And on top of that, the diligence of that small body forever racing through the hospital, and the courage, when something was unjust, to square up to anyone at all and demand to know who was right and who was wrong.
Impossibly cute, impossibly pretty, and upright to the bone. No wonder every nerve in him bent toward her.
Kang Dae-han had never been in love, so he hadn't been able to name what this was. Now he could.
He liked her. Ong So-yul.
The way she kept coming back to him, the want to keep her at his side—he understood now that it was attraction. The kind a man feels for a woman.
"Why? Wh-why would you?"
"Because Dr. Ong is mine."
More precisely—because he wanted her to be.
He had named the feeling, and his nature was already rising to drive the stake home, when—
"D-Doctor... Doctorrr..."
The child sitting up in the bed was crying, and the first thing Dae-han saw was that small hand clutching So-yul's.
"Yeon-woo. Are you all right?"
"No. It... it hurts so much. Please save me."
The voice was no louder than an ant crawling, but the boy forced the words out with everything he had.
Dae-han saw the bruises spilling out past the child's clothes. He didn't need a careful look to know what they were. NAT. Non-accidental trauma.
Hit. By his own father.
Why were there so many pieces of human garbage walking around in the world?
Crack. Dae-han rolled his neck from side to side, and the joints popped with a vicious sound, like overstrung nerves snapping.
He was staring down at the guardian sprawled on the floor as if he meant to kill him, when a woman's voice—all backbone—cut in.
"Dr. Kang. You said earlier you'd take care of them for me. Flies, bastards, whatever they were. Didn't you?"
Ong So-yul. Pretty, cute, and cool, all at once. Of course she was.
"Yeah. I'll wreck him for you."
Dae-han answered, having read her meaning clean through.
To So-yul, Dr. Kang Dae-han was a man of terrifying precision and speed.
She had already thought his judgment and his pace remarkable, in ordinary diagnoses and in the operating room. Discovering the signs of NAT only made her admire his drive more.
He ran a thorough workup on Yeon-woo, separated the terrified child from the father who had made a habit of beating him, and then called the police and a social worker. What she would have fumbled through, he handled without a hitch—tending not only to the boy's body, but to his heart, down to the smallest detail.
"We'll admit him. For now, Yeon-woo stays with us."
Send the boy straight to a welfare facility and he would only be frightened by strangers, Dae-han said. Better to treat him properly here and see how things stood.
At last they got the child to sleep and stepped out of the room.
"In the meantime I'll start looking for another guardian. I know people in that line of work. I'll lean on them if I have to and put pressure on the investigation. That piece of garbage isn't coming back out into society. I'll bury him where he belongs."
"Haa... yes, Doctor."
"So don't worry too much, Dr. Ong."
Kang Dae-han said it as he laid a hand on So-yul's shoulder, gone rigid with tension.
How steady he felt. It was almost as if her own childhood were being healed.
"Kid. Just because your dad scolded you a little, you can't go around pressing charges on him. Think about it. If your dad's gone, how's a little thing like you supposed to live? No house, no nothing. Who's gonna earn the money you eat with? Hm?"
"Look, look at this. The bruise is huge."
"You listen to your dad and he won't do it again. Take this money, buy yourself an ice cream, and go on home. Hm?"
She must have been seven. The day her drunk father beat her like a dog.
In nothing but her undershirt, So-yul knocked on the door of the police station. It was the first time she had ever reported her father, and the officer drove her out as if she were a nuisance.
Listen better and it won't happen. If your dad goes to prison, what are you going to eat?
She could never forget the walk home with a crumpled thousand-won bill in her hand. Later, when she learned that officer had been her father's friend, the betrayal had boiled in her until she thought she might come apart.
If, instead of those cruel adults who had walked right past her, there had been someone like Dr. Kang Dae-han—how safe she would have felt. Looking at an adult who was strong, and just, and warm once you knew him, she would have believed a superhero had actually appeared.
And then her mother's leg wouldn't have ended up like that.
"You're crying. Who made you cry?"
At Kang Dae-han's words, So-yul lifted a hand without thinking to wipe the wet corners of her eyes. He was faster. He brushed her face clean himself, then drew her fingers up and laid them across his own palm.
"Pretend it's a Death Note. Write the names. I'll kill every one of them."
"There are too many."
"Lucky for you, I'm a hell of a shot. I can take them all at once. Write them down."
She creased the corners of her eyes and smiled at the man tossing out a joke that bloody. But the tears, once they had crashed in like a wave, would not easily recede. The child bruised black and blue looked too much like her younger self, and that made it worse.
"Stop! Don't you touch my So-yul!"
Her mother, throwing her own body over the girl to shield her. And then the knives. The shop drowned in blood.
Trauma could drag a person under without any warning at all. Just like this.
"Haa... I'm sorry. I must be... out of my mind. Hic."
So-yul bowed her head, and her shoulders shook. Kang Dae-han took one step in and pulled her into his arms.
For a moment it felt as if a great tree had opened its branches and gathered her in. The cool scent of him, and the warmth where his skin met hers, seemed to loosen something that had been knotted deep inside her.
"Doctor. Me..."
"Yes. You."
"Teach me. A lot. So I can become a good doctor."
She wanted to heal her mother's leg. She wanted to give a new life to the woman who would limp for the rest of her days because of her. Maybe that was why she had chosen orthopedics in the first place. The words were a jumble, but Kang Dae-han patted her back as if he understood every one of them.
"But Dr. Ong—if you want to learn a lot from me, you're going to have to stay stuck right here at my side from now on."
Only then did So-yul realize she was locked in a full embrace. She lifted her head and looked up at Kang Dae-han.
Lashes fanned like a folding fan. A nose carved as if from sculpture. And lips—for a man—startlingly red and full. The moment they filled her vision, her heart kicked.
Is this what being a fan feels like? It probably is. But fandom is fandom.
They shouldn't be holding each other where everyone could see. She hurried to pull away and step back—but he was faster, catching her hand and looping it through his arm.
"Before that, let's go bank some sleep."
"What?"
So-yul blinked her swollen, tear-stung eyes and followed where he led. She walked as if spellbound, and before she knew it they were standing in front of the on-call room.
"Sleep while you can. Once I fix on something, I don't care about fire or flood—and I can't say how hard I'm going to drive you, Dr. Ong."
Is he planning to teach me ruthlessly? Good. I like that.
During her internship she had nearly burned out, body and mind both spent. But looking at Dr. Kang—remarkable in every way—she felt her very cells come alive. There was even a way the trauma itself became fuel.
"Yes, Doctor! I'll steel myself!"
"Good, So-yul. I'll take you at that brave word."
With a soft huff of a smile, he opened the door himself and tucked her inside.
The door closed, and he vanished from sight. Even so, until she lay down on the bed, it still felt as if Kang Dae-han were right there beside her.
"He dropped the formal speech. Almost for the first time."
Only then did it come back to her—that he had set aside that stiff manner and called her by name, warmly.
"Oh my god."
Gazing up at the black ceiling, So-yul smiled. It was the day she became his favorite pupil.