Hyun-woo
I forced my eyes open.
The ceiling was the first thing I saw—dim, cracked in places, the same sight I woke up to every day. The second was the deep, sinking weight in my chest, pressing down before I had the chance to register anything else.
Morning.
Or maybe it wasn't. The blinds in my room were shut, blocking out whatever dull light might have seeped in from outside.
I turned my head slightly, exhaling. The room smelled like stale coffee and textbooks. My desk was still cluttered from last night—medical notes, a half-empty cup of instant coffee, my stethoscope resting on top of a closed textbook I hadn't touched in hours.
I should get up.
I should study.
I should do something.
Instead, I lay there, staring at the ceiling, listening to the quiet hum of the dormitory outside.
Eventually, I forced myself out of bed.
I grabbed my phone—3:42 AM.
Right.
I ran a hand down my face, sighing. Maybe coffee would help. Maybe moving would make the weight in my chest a little less suffocating.
I left my room and walked towards Vincent's room.
Vincent's door was slightly open, and a dim light spilled out. I didn't even have to look inside to know what I'd see—him, hunched over his desk, eyes glued to his notes, the same exhaustion carved into his face that I saw every day in the mirror.
He must've heard me walking past because his voice drifted out.
"Did you even sleep?"
I scoffed. "You're asking me that?"
A pause. Then a quiet chuckle. "Fair enough."
That was the thing about med school. It didn't matter how tired you were—someone else was always just as bad, if not worse.
"I swear, this place is trying to kill us," Vincent muttered.
I didn't respond. It was a joke, but it didn't feel funny.
Because wasn't that the truth?
I walked past his room, heading towards the kitchen. The silence of the dorm was thick, the kind that would press into your skull and made you hyper-aware of every breath, every footstep.
I made my coffee. I sat at the table. I stared at nothing in particular.
And then—
It hit me.
The memory of yesterday.
The collapsed student. The rush to the infirmary. The sharp, urgent, uncommanded orders thrown between two exhausted students who barely knew each other but had no choice but to work together.
Her.
Choi Soo-young.
The one from the cafeteria. The one I'd bumped into.
I hadn't thought much about it at the time. There hadn't been room to think.
But now—
My stomach twisted.
What if father found out?
What if Hanuel again twisted this into something it wasn't? What if he told Father that I had worked with her, making it sound like something else entirely?
The thought sent a sharp, cold wave of panic through me.
The last time had been bad enough. The accusations. The way my father's voice had turned sharp, disappointed. The suffocating weight of his expectations wrapping around my throat, reminding me—again—that he didn't care about anything except results.
I wasn't even doing anything wrong. It had been nothing. Just another emergency. Just another situation where we did what we were supposed to do.
But that wouldn't matter to him.
I sat there, fingers tightening around my coffee cup, heart pounding.
I couldn't let this happen again.
I needed to be more careful.
More distant.
More—
I exhaled sharply, pushing myself up from the table. The coffee was still half-full, but I didn't care anymore. I left it there and walked back to my room.
The second I sat at my desk, I knew.
I wasn't going to be able to study tonight.
I stared at the open textbook in front of me. I tried to focus, tried to push the thoughts out of my head.
But the words blurred.
The anxiety clawed at my ribs, tightening, and tightening.
My pulse was too fast. My breathing was shallow.
I squeezed my eyes shut, gripping the edge of the desk.
It was fine.
Nothing had happened.
But my father wouldn't care.
Hanuel wouldn't care.
I was 24 years old and still trapped under my father's control, still terrified of a phone call, of a misinterpreted moment, of a lie that could ruin everything.
I inhaled sharply. Exhaled.
Tried to push the panic down.
Tried—
And failed.
---
I hadn't slept.
It wasn't unusual. Sleep had become more of a luxury than a necessity these days. Some nights, I'd close my eyes and drift into nothingness, but most nights, like this one, I just lay there, staring at the ceiling, waiting for the alarm to ring.
Waiting to feel something other than this heavy, crushing emptiness.
I could still hear my father's voice from that day's call.
"You are not some ordinary man who can waste his life chasing after foolish distractions. You are my son. You exist to reach our expectations. That is your purpose. That is what I have raised you for. I didn't raise you with all my sweat and tears just for you to become a nuisance— a burden to our family. So, you don't get to choose."
His words repeated in my head like a scratched record, over and over again, until my chest felt tight, until I wanted to scream—but I didn't.
Because that would be pointless.
Instead, I got up. The dorm room felt suffocating. The textbooks, the unfinished notes, the smell of old coffee. I needed air.
So I left.
It was 6:12 AM. Too early for most students, but I had nowhere else to go.
My feet carried me toward the hospital wing.
Maybe I'd check on the collapsed student from yesterday. Maybe I'd just sit somewhere, pretend I had a purpose. Maybe I just needed to be anywhere but in my own head.
I walked through the quiet halls, the scent of antiseptic thick in the air. Everything was still, untouched, as if the world had yet to wake up.
And then—
I saw her.
That girl.
She was standing near the reception desk, flipping through a file. Her fingers pressed against her temple like she was trying to will away a migraine.
For a second, I almost didn't recognize her.
Before, she had just been a girl—the one I'd seen in the cafeteria, the one I'd bumped into in the hallway, the one who had helped me yesterday when that student collapsed.
But now, standing under the dim hospital lights, with dark circles under her eyes and that same hollow exhaustion weighing down her shoulders—she was something else.
Something familiar.
Her name.
What was her name again?
I frowned slightly, trying to remember.
Choi Soo-young.
Right.
Something clicked in my head, she was Korean.
I remembered her saying it yesterday, but I hadn't processed it then. Hadn't really cared.
Now, though… now it settled in my mind like an uncomfortable truth.
In this foreign country, in this cold, relentless place that drained the life out of me day by day—
There was someone else.
Someone who might understand the kind of suffocating expectations that came with a name, a family, a future you had no say in.
And for reasons I couldn't quite explain, that realization made my chest feel too tight.
I should've left. I was supposed to stay as much as far away from her as I could.
But before I could turn away, she spoke.
"You look like shit."
I blinked.
She finally looked up at me, her expression unreadable, but her voice flat and blunt. "Seriously. Do you even sleep?"
I hesitated before answering. "You too."
She let out a short breath—not quite a laugh, not quite a sigh.
Then, before I could figure out what to say next, she asked, "Do you regret it?"
I frowned. "What?"
"This." She gestured vaguely around her—the hospital walls, the silence, the never-ending exhaustion. "Do you ever think we should've just… quit?"
The question caught me off guard.
Quitting.
I had thought about it a thousand times before. More than a thousand. But that's all it ever was—a thought. Something I buried before it could turn into anything real.
Because quitting?
That wasn't an option.
Not for someone like me.
I exhaled, looking away. "It's not that simple."
She studied me for a moment before muttering, "So you have people breathing down your neck."
Not a question.
I didn't respond.
I didn't need to.
The silence between us stretched. Not uncomfortable. Just heavy.
Finally, she shut the file in her hands, adjusting it under her arm.
"Well," she muttered, "figures."
She moved past me, her shoulder barely brushing against mine.
She didn't wait for a response. She just walked away, disappearing down the hall like she had never been there in the first place.
And for the first time in a long time, I felt something other than numb.
Not interest. Not connection.
But understanding.
And that terrified me.
I should've forgotten about her.
She was just another med student. Just another exhausted soul trying to survive like the rest of us.
But as I walked through campus, as I sat in lectures, as I scribbled notes that I barely processed, my father's voice echoed in my head.
"You're not here to get distracted, Hyun-woo."
"Don't dissapoint me"
My hands curled into fists under the desk.
It wasn't like that.
I barely even knew her.
But my father wouldn't see it that way. He had already bought into Hanuel's lies. And if Hanuel found out about yesterday—if he again twisted it into something it wasn't—
No.
I exhaled slowly, unclenching my fists.
I needed to be careful.
I needed to stay away.
Before I lost more than just my sanity.
---
Soo-young
I wasn't supposed to care.
There was no time for that.
Exhaustion had settled into my bones long before dawn.
I had been running on three hours of sleep and two cups of black coffee, but it wasn't enough. It was never enough. The fluorescent hospital lights were too bright, the air too sterile, and the medical notes in my hands were starting to blur together no matter how many times I blinked.
I had told myself I'd go back to the dorms and try to sleep for at least another hour, but I never did. Instead, I ended up here, in the hospital wing, flipping through a case study with half my mind elsewhere.
Then I heard footsteps.
I didn't bother looking up at first. Early mornings were usually reserved for professors, interns, or students who, like me, had nowhere else to be.
But something made me glance up anyway.
And that's when I saw him.
Kim Hyun-woo.
I hadn't expected to see him again so soon.
The last time we spoke—if it could even be called that—was in the infirmary, when that student had collapsed out of nowhere, and before that was in the hallway when he bumped into me. He had apologized more times than necessary, like some kind of reflex, and at the time, I had just thought he was strange.
And right now, he was still strange. That much was clear.
But this time, I actually looked at him.
Really looked. And I noticed things I hadn't before.
Standing there in the dim lighting, looking like he hadn't slept in days.
He really did look like shit.
That's why I said it out loud. Not because I cared, but because it was obvious. I wasn't trying to be mean. It was just a fact.
But when he looked at me—really looked at me—something about him made me hesitate.
His face, sharp and defined, should've been effortlessly handsome. High cheekbones, a strong jawline, sharp eyes that should've carried some kind of intensity. But exhaustion had carved into him, leaving dark shadows under his eyes, a certain stiffness in his shoulders, a weight in his posture that made him seem almost… detached. His dark eyes carried something heavy. Something unsettling.
Like he wasn't really here.
He looked like someone who had forgotten how to sleep.
Or maybe someone who no longer saw the point in it.
When I said that, he blinked, as if he hadn't expected me to acknowledge him at all. And then when he responded with a simple, "You too,"I almost laughed.
Not because it was funny, but because it was true.
Yet somehow, it made something in my chest tighten.
Because he wasn't wrong.
I did actually look like shit as well.
And then I asked the question.
"Do you regret it?"
I hadn't planned on asking, but the words slipped out anyway.
I don't know why I asked. Maybe because I had been asking myself the same thing lately.
There were days when I wondered if I had made the right choice—if all of this suffering was worth it, if the crushing weight of expectations would ever let up.
But I still had options.
I still had a way out, if I wanted it badly enough.
But did he?
He didn't answer right away.
Instead, he looked at me, really looked, like he was deciding whether or not to tell the truth.
Then, finally, he said, "It's not that simple."
His voice wasn't bitter, but it wasn't empty either. Just resigned.
That's when I knew.
He didn't have a choice.
I studied him in the silence that followed, taking in the stiff set of his shoulders, the tension in his jaw, the exhaustion buried deep beneath his skin.
He was carrying something.
Something heavy.
Something I didn't understand.
Not yet.
And I shouldn't have cared.
But for some reason, I did.
Just a little.
But when I finally turned and walked away, I found myself thinking about him longer than I should have.
The rest of the day dragged.
Morning rounds, afternoon lectures, another pile of notes to review.
I should've been focused, but my mind kept pulling me back to that dawn.
To him.
To the way his voice had been flat, but not indifferent. To the way his exhaustion clung to him, but never made him weak.
To the way I had found him weird, yet later discovered myself stealing glances at him across the lecture hall.
To the way I had looked at him for the first time and realized—beneath all the exhaustion, beneath all the weight pressing down on him—
He was handsome.
I hadn't noticed it before, until that dawn. Or maybe I just hadn't cared.
But now that I had, it was hard to ignore.
And I hated that.
Because I wasn't supposed to care.
Because this wasn't supposed to mean anything.
Because we were just two strangers drowning under the same weight, struggling to stay afloat.
But then, why did I find myself glancing at him one too many times in the lecture hall?
Why did I find myself wondering what exactly made him so tired?
Why did I find myself remembering his voice, his exhaustion, his silence?
I shook the thought away and focused on my notes.
This was nothing.
It had to be.
---
I've seen people mess up before. It happens all the time. Med school isn't some perfect, sterile world where everyone gets everything right on the first try. Mistakes are inevitable—some small, some big, some that end careers before they even begin.
So when Kim Hyun-woo slipped up, I should have just looked away.
But I didn't.
Because the way he messed up was weird.
Not in a reckless way. Not in a panicked, rookie way. No, Hyun-woo was the kind of person who operated like a machine—sharp, precise, every movement calculated. He was almost unnervingly competent. Which made his mistakes all the more jarring.
It was small, barely noticeable. A miscalculated stitch, the suture needle piercing at a slightly wrong angle. It wasn't dramatic. It wasn't even that bad. Just a minor hesitation, a miscalculated stitch, a fraction of a second where his hands didn't move the way they were supposed to.
If I hadn't been watching at the exact moment, I wouldn't have even caught it.
But I was paying attention.
And for some reason, I found it strangely amusing.
Not funny enough to laugh, obviously. But something about it made me want to tilt my head and watch a little longer, study him like an unfamiliar specimen under a microscope.
And he was exhausted. That much was obvious. The dark circles under his eyes had deepened over the past few weeks, his features looking almost hollow under the harsh fluorescent lighting. But exhaustion wasn't the weird part. We were all exhausted.
Hyun-woo wasn't the type to make careless mistakes. He was precise, mechanical even. The kind of person who always looked like he was solving a complex equation in his head while the rest of us were just trying to survive. He worked himself into exhaustion, barely spoke to anyone, and carried himself like he was perpetually three steps away from breaking apart—but still, he never slipped.
Until now.
I glanced at him, expecting—what, exactly? Frustration? Embarrassment? A flicker of self-doubt?
No. What I saw was annoyance.
Not at himself, not at the mistake, but at the fact that he had made one at all. Like the universe had personally inconvenienced him by allowing fatigue to catch up.
And that? That was kind of funny.
That was fascinating.
Hyun-woo is weird.
And, somehow, that makes him even more interesting.
I didn't say anything. Didn't react. Just observed.
He finished the stitch, backed away, and kept his face perfectly neutral. But I let my gaze linger for just a second longer, just enough to make sure he knew I saw.
His jaw tightened. A barely-there reaction. But I caught it.
I didn't smile. Didn't say anything. Just turned back to my own work, pretending like I hadn't just witnessed the most interesting thing all night.
Strange.
He was so strange.
And for some reason, I couldn't help but find it hilarious.