7:47 AM.
Tae-Hee had stopped checking the time. He'd done it one last time while climbing down from the bus—stalled in the middle of Hanseong Boulevard, engine dead, driver dejected, passengers resigned—and since then, he'd tucked his phone deep into his pocket. Knowing the exact time wouldn't fix a thing. It would only make him want to sit on the curb and cry.
He was running.
Not the dignified little trot one permits oneself when slightly late for a meeting. No—he was running for real, arms pumping, breath already short, the soles of his shoes slapping against the asphalt, still damp from the previous night. His white coat—recovered from a dumpster, a dumpster, he'd never dare tell anyone that—flew behind him like a white flag of surrender.
The night before, he'd returned late from the local laundromat. Too late. The machine had a drainage issue at the end of the cycle; he'd waited and waited, and by the time he finally got home with his clean laundry, it was past ten o'clock. He'd cleaned the apartment anyway—it had needed it for far too long, and his methodical nature wouldn't allow him to put it off—and went to bed at an hour he preferred to forget.
Result: he didn't hear his alarm. Or rather, he heard it vaguely, the way one hears rain from under a duvet, and decided in a half-sleep that five more minutes wouldn't change anything.
Five minutes. He'd lost twenty-seven just looking for his coat.
It wasn't on the hanger. Not on the back of the chair. Not in the wardrobe, not under the bed, not in the bathroom by some freak occurrence. He had searched the apartment with growing frenzy before realizing, his stomach sinking, that he must have dropped it while carrying groceries up two days earlier. And that someone—himself, probably, in an automatic gesture while taking out the trash—had tossed it in with the waste.
He hadn't even had time to be mortified. He'd plunged his hand into the bin, retrieved the crumpled and vaguely cold coat, and took off running to catch the bus.
Which had broken down.
Traffic jams stretched across the entire width of the main avenue. A sea of hoods and impatient horns, bloated buses stuck one behind the other, bike couriers weaving through with the quiet arrogance of those who know they've won. Tae-Hee had abandoned the crowded sidewalk to cut through a parallel street, then through the alley behind the covered market, then through a passage he knew between two buildings.
I have never been late.
The thought looped in his mind, rhythmic with his strides. Not once in eight months of residency. He'd even arrived before the senior doctors on several occasions, waiting in the corridors while re-reading his notes, coffee in hand. He had a reputation—modest, discreet, but real—for being reliable.
And now he was an hour and fifteen minutes late.
Dr. Shin was going to look at him with that expression he reserved for interns who disappoint. That flat, slightly lowered gaze that said nothing because it didn't need to.
Though... Tae-Hee dodged a passerby without stopping. Though I'm not in ICU anymore.
The department change, abrupt and with no explanation other than a terse administrative email, had disoriented him two days ago. ICU to Orthopedics—a transfer no one had clearly justified to him, and one he'd preferred not to ask questions about, for fear the answer might be worse than the silence. Dr. Shin remained in ICU. His new supervisor, he didn't know yet.
A stranger might be more lenient. Strangers didn't have established expectations of him yet.
There was also—and he allowed himself to think about it for exactly one and a half seconds before forcing himself back to the immediate problem—there was also the fact that Orthopedics was Dave's department. Seeing him more often wasn't an unpleasant prospect.
But that really wasn't the point right now.
He emerged onto the esplanade running along the east side of the hospital and stopped dead.
A crowd. A compact mass of people—patients, visitors, two or three security guards, someone with a cart—blocked the side entrance in an indistinct mess. A stretcher, maybe. An incident. Tae-Hee didn't try to figure it out. He pivoted.
The main entrance was on the other side of the building. Four more minutes of running, minimum. He glanced to the left—the service lane, the small staff parking lot, and at the back, the perimeter wall by the garden with its old metal gate that everyone knew was only unlocked from the inside.
He didn't hesitate for long.
The fence was rusty but solid. Tae-Hee grabbed the top bar, planted his foot, climbed with practiced clumsiness—he hadn't climbed anything since high school—and hauled himself to the top. From up there, he quickly checked that no one was looking his way.
The parking lot was empty. The alley deserted.
He began to climb down the other side.
That was when he heard the voice.
— Is this a new entry technique for the ER, Jong?
Something in his attention shifted a fraction of a second too soon. His foot searched for an anchor that wasn't there. His left hand slipped along the bar, his fingers closed on nothing, and he had time for exactly one thought—ah—before falling.
He landed on his side. A sharp pain shot up his shoulder, acute and radiating, the kind that steals your breath and leaves you suspended for a second between a wince and a scream. He stayed motionless on the asphalt for a moment, blinking, his white coat now decorated with a long grey streak.
Then he looked up.
In front of him—hands in his pockets, an expression difficult to decipher between surprise and something dangerously close to amusement—stood a resident in a white coat he recognized immediately.
Jacob Lawson.
Tae-Hee didn't know him particularly well.
He'd spotted him two, maybe three times while passing the Orthopedics department—a silhouette you noticed without trying to notice, for the simple reason that he occupied space differently than others.
Tall, very tall, the kind of stature that makes you instinctively tilt your chin up to maintain eye contact. Dark skin, dreadlocks gathered in a low, messy bun that seemed to hold by habit rather than intention. He was attractive, and Tae-Hee wasn't going to lie to himself about that—he was incapable of lying to himself about anything, it was one of his most constant flaws—but that detail wasn't particularly useful right now.
What was useful, however, was that this was the first time this taciturn individual had spoken directly to him.
Jacob looked down at him with the unreadable expression of someone who had long ago decided not to tire himself out by having one, and said, in his calm, level voice:
— The doctor sent me to bring you in.
He didn't wait for an answer. He turned and walked away, hands in his pockets, as if the matter were settled.
Tae-Hee stood up, brushed off his coat—useless, the grey streak was there to stay—and followed him without a word.
They went through the back service door, the one no one ever uses except the cleaning staff in the early morning, and waited for the service elevator in a silence that echoed more than Tae-Hee would have liked. The mechanism was slow. The seconds stretched. Beside him, Jacob stared at the closed doors with the placid patience of someone who had learned no longer to find time long.
Tae-Hee, meanwhile, could hear his own still-rushed breathing, felt the sweat beading along his neck, and was conscious of every embarrassing detail of his person with a particularly cruel acuity.
He finally couldn't take it anymore.
— How did you know I was back there?
Jacob didn't turn immediately. He just lowered his gaze—this tiny movement was enough, given the height difference, to produce a slightly crushing effect—and replied with the same flat tone he would have used to comment on the weather:
— Originally, I was planning to hide out in a quiet corner.
A beat.
— And then I saw you.
Ah.
Tae-Hee decided not to dig deeper.
The elevator doors opened with a dull clank of tired machinery. Jacob entered first, Tae-Hee followed. They went up in silence, walked out in silence, and Tae-Hee noticed that Jacob walked with that particular nonchalance of people who seem to find every movement slightly too costly—not laziness, but rather a sovereign economy of effort, as if rushing were a concession he refused to make to the world.
He stopped in front of a door.
A gold plaque. Joseph Douglas.
His heart leaped.
Oh no.
Oh no, no, no—
— I make it a rule never to get mixed up in other people's problems, Jacob's voice drifted behind him.
The door was already open. Tae-Hee was already inside. He wasn't quite sure how those two things had happened so fast.
What he did know, however—because he turned a fraction of a second before the door closed—was that he would have sworn he saw, on Jacob Lawson's usually inert face, something that looked dangerously like a smile.
Devilish. Tae-Hee was certain of it. Absolutely, irremediably devilish.