Errands (1)

Kang Dae-han was on his way to the room where the fellows kept their stations when he came upon a little chick muttering to itself in the corridor.

How does a person even come to look like that?

"I'll see for myself whether it's crooked. I have to see it." The demand, hurled at him out of nowhere, that he take out his dick — and the frankly deranged suggestion that he strip naked and climb into a rubber washbasin — the reason those words had wrung laughter out of him instead of rage was, without question, the face this woman happened to have.

A round face, framed by pure and limpid eyes. That bright, sunny air of hers brought to mind a children's show host he must have glimpsed on TV once.

Maybe it was the cute, guileless look of her, but one glance at her was like shoveling in a fistful of cotton candy, and her skin — tender as sundubu, that silken-soft tofu — left his fingers itching to press it, just once.

And why, of all names, did it have to be Ong So-yul.

A name that pursed his lips into a single rounded pucker, first syllable to last.

"Dr. Kang Dae-han!"

Spotting him, Ong So-yul came running, her high-wound ponytail swinging with every step.

The eyes that took up half of that tiny, kindergartner's face really were something when they sparkled like that.

"What is it."

Kang Dae-han, who had never once in his life been taught the first thing about speaking gently, tossed the words at her as she approached.

Perhaps because of the cold air he carried, most people who dared come near him flinched and faltered mid-step. Ong So-yul was not most people.

"I've been waiting so I could give you your coffee!"

Without a flicker of hesitation she closed the distance another step and held out the tray. Come to think of it, it had always been this woman who came to him first.

At the Ongsimi shop. In the department. In the emergency room.

Time after time, those small hands had tugged at him — come on, this way — and, unable to resist, his feet had simply followed. Ludicrous, when he thought about it.

"Here — drink!"

His hand took one of the coffees without a moment's pause. A cafe mocha drowning in whipped cream.

"Wha — huh? You're drinking that one?"

"You hand it over, then take it back?"

"No, sir! I just assumed you didn't like sweet things."

A draft stirred from somewhere, carrying a sweet, faint floral-soap scent to the tip of his nose. A scent that soothed the nerves that had been standing on end over his father's affairs.

"I like it. I just can't eat what isn't there."

"Oh. I see."

Nodding, the woman tore open one of the straw wrappers from the tray with her own hands and pushed the straw into his coffee with a firm, deliberate poke.

The yellow straw standing upright in all that white cream stirred a certain impulsive thought in him.

"Dr. Ong So-yul. Don't think one coffee squares this away. I'm owed proper compensation. That incident caused me a great deal of trouble."

"Oh — I had no idea... Yes, sir! Just name it, whatever you want!"

And so he said it. To this plucky little chick.

"For one month, you'll work under me, running my errands. Whatever I want."

An utterly preposterous proposal.

Tray of leftover coffees in hand, So-yul headed from her meeting with Dae-han back to the residents' room.

Ahn Hae-young, who'd been resting her eyes, slid over the instant she heard her. "Ong-Ong, I ordered a sweet yummy cafe mocha — how come all that's left is iced americano?"

"You bought it, so just freaking drink it, Hae-young."

Grinning ear to ear, So-yul handed over the americano, its ice long since melted into watery nothing.

Then her mind drifted back to what had happened with Dae-han.

"You will take it out while I count to three. What kind of perverted quack doctor barges in with a face thick as a steel plate! One! Two! Three!"

...That was how she'd meant to deliver it. Instead, out of nowhere, the man had handed her the chance to compensate him.

"Ong-Ong. Did the exhaustion finally break your brain? Why are you snickering like that?"

"Because my bankbook survived."

"What?"

"I get to leave my savings alone until they mature."

So-yul was delighted that Dae-han didn't want a cash payout. All she had to do was run a few errands — wasn't that basically nothing?

For a woman who had run errands for Ong Jun-soo since before she could remember and worked every species of part-time job under the sun, that much grinding would be a piece of cake.

Yes. Right up to that moment, she truly believed it.

Without the faintest dream of what the errands to come would actually turn out to be.

Kang Dae-han, in all honesty, did not rest.

He volunteered for on-call duty so freely and so often that she began to suspect the man had no home to return to, and she almost never caught him asleep.

And yet everything about him, from the set of his clothes to the set of his shoulders, was always perfectly squared away. Any other man would have come unraveled under that schedule; he was flawless to the point that not a single hair fell out of line.

The problem was So-yul, stationed at his side.

The summons arrived one after another, in messages like these:

There was no rhyme or reason to the errands Dae-han handed down.

Petty coffee runs were the least of it — the man would claim, out of nowhere, that he had no one to eat with, and summon her to the basement cafeteria just as she was leaving for the day.

Sorting the data he needed for his paper was nothing; he would even call a first-year resident, still hopelessly green, into the operating room and put her to work assisting.

"Be honest with me. Ong So-yul — has Major Kang Dae-han taken a shine to you or what?"

The question came from Ko Jae-goon, a fellow first-year, who was eyeing So-yul where she lay draped across the room like a boneless invertebrate.

"He's been discharged. What's with the 'Major'?"

Dae-han already snapped her to attention every time he summoned her; tack the word Major on top of it, and her neck went ramrod stiff all on its own.

"Every time our Major Kang goes 'Jaegoon! Jaegoon!' like that, I feel like I've re-enlisted on the spot. But when the Major calls your name, y'know, I swear you feel like one fucking important soldier."

Ko Jae-goon let loose a great goofy laugh and scratched his pudgy belly.

He'd only just mustered out of his service as an army physician, and with the military not yet fully drained from his system, he hollered "Loyalty!" at the top of his lungs every time he ran into the Fellow Soldier trio.

"Jaegoon, honey — Ong-Ong didn't get picked by Dr. Kang. She got taken on as his star protégée. Totally different thing."

That was Ahn Hae-young, patiently arranging her pink hair before the mirror.

"And that right there is an opportunity. Where else does a fellow personally teach clueless first-years like us? And a surgeon with skills like Dr. Kang's? You don't just stumble into one of those."

Every so often, Hae-young came out with exactly the right thing, zero filter.

Right. Time to fire up the optimism circuit.

Chaotically busy and bone-tired, yes — but So-yul had always carried one wish: to remake herself into a genuinely skilled orthopedic surgeon.

Learn everything properly while she had the chance, maybe open her own clinic someday — then she'd want for nothing. She wanted to earn real money, so that her mother, who had spent her whole life looking after everyone else, could live without ever counting pennies again.

Under Kang Dae-han's wing, somehow, the picture sharpened into focus. Repay him with errands, learn the trade at the same time — two birds with one stone, no?

With an effort, So-yul hauled upright a body so tired it felt ready to slide right off the chair, and hardened her resolve.

Knock, knock.

Just then the residents' room door swung open, and in walked Chief Resident Ma Seong-cheol.

"Nobody skips tonight's team dinner. Absolutely nobody."

"Yes, sir!"

"Yeees..."

True to his post as the drill sergeant of this wing, the Chief Resident barked his warning and left.

"I hear the OS dinners are absolutely lethal — those people drink like it's a contact sport. Let's pop a hangover pill before we head over."

After amiably splitting the drinks Hae-young had stocked up in advance, So-yul stretched her arms long toward the ceiling.

The curtain rose on her very first department dinner — one, she suspected, she'd be lucky to walk away from with her mind intact.

"I'm so sorry I'm late!"

The second So-yul stepped into the BBQ restaurant where the dinner was underway, she folded herself nearly in half in a bow and made for the table.

She'd been waylaid on her way out by a call from one of her own patients.

The patient's health anxiety was a force of nature, and it had taken upward of ten separate explanations of the CT results to talk them down.

The Chief Resident's parting words — late means dead — ringing in her ears, she had sprinted the last stretch to the restaurant with cold sweat trickling down her spine. And then, of all things: not a single open seat anywhere near the huddle of residents.

When she tried to drag a chair over anyway, the owner waved her off — she'd burn herself on the gas burner.

"Dr. Ong So-yul, sit here. I have to head out early anyway — I've got surgery tomorrow."

Seo Yoon-ah, spotting So-yul from deeper in, waved a hand in welcome.

Dr. Yoon-ah was the only woman among all the fellows. Gentle by nature and quick to look after her juniors, she was someone So-yul followed around only too happily —

but today, of all days, her kindness wasn't entirely welcome.

"Enjoy the food, and get home safe, Dr. So-yul!"

The reason was simple: the seat Dr. Yoon-ah had given up on her way out was the one right next to Kang Dae-han.