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He finds her in the General Surgery office. The door creaks as he pushes it open, its echo ringing oddly loud in his ears.
She’s slumped over on the table, and his breath catches before he notices the glasses carefully folded next to her head.
The room is quiet, a refuge tucked away from the afternoon bustle downstairs.
‘Ah,’ she rises to face him, and hurriedly nods in greeting. Her voice is low, tinged with sleep, and there’s a pen sticking out of her hair. ‘Hello Professor.’
‘Dr. Jang,’ he says. His throat is parched; he wishes he had some water on hand right now.
The words in his head arrange and rearrange themselves into one sentence, then another. No, no. Not like this, maybe that way instead. Or perhaps he should start all over again. He thumbs through his internal thesaurus, vaguely reminded of that time when he was six and knocked over his mother’s vase. He had locked himself in his room then, furiously sketching out and crumpling up one inadequate apology speech after another.
In the end, his mother was angrier over the fact that he had almost half the household stash of paper strewn all over his floor, crushed into tiny little balls.
He blinks, abruptly aware of her eyes on him. The clock behind her ticks on, monotonous, unending, and footsteps from the hallway outside softly resound in the stillness of the room.
‘I said before,’ he begins, finally, ‘that I would treat you to a nice meal.’
Jeong-won passes her the utensils. The pot of tteokbokki is starting to sizzle, and he tucks his chin to fasten the apron around his neck, hiding a smile as Gyeo-ul peers into the pot.
‘I heard Ik-jun bought you tteokbokki once,’ he says, before adding, lightly, ‘with Dr. Chu Min-ha, right?’
She had chosen the restaurant tonight. He had thought briefly about protesting, to insist that he would buy her meat, but hey – if she likes it, he likes it, and his wallet likes it, then who was he to say no?
‘Ah, yes,’ she replies, distracted, eyes still on the prize. ‘Professor Lee told you? He brought his son too.’
‘He did?’
‘U-ju can’t eat spicy food yet, so we had jajang tteokbokki. It was delicious.’ She nods to herself, as if to doubly confirm the tastiness of the dish in her memory.
He chuckles at the image of U-ju’s mouth smeared with black jajang sauce. He pauses at the thought of Gyeo-ul’s mouth stained in the same way. He wants to know, a little desperately actually, what U-ju thinks of Gyeo-ul. Maybe he can go over to Ik-jun’s tomorrow. He needs to save some money after this anyway. Ah, wait, Ikjun is still in Spain. And also he needs to steer the conversation back, somehow.
‘There’s no one that guy isn’t friends with.’ He picks up the tongs and busies himself by stirring the pot. ‘Dr. Yong Seong-nim, Dr. Do Jae-hak, Dr. Chu Min-ha… speaking of Dr. Chu Min-ha, I see you two together all the time. How did you become close?’ He tries to keep his voice placid, to eradicate traces of anything beyond bland curiosity, as if this was a question that had just occurred to him right at that moment and not something that’s kept him up at night before.
She tells him about their shared love for a certain boy band, and he files that information away for future use. Absently, he fingers a damp strand of hair still stuck to his forehead. Maybe splashing his face with water before leaving his office hadn’t been the best idea, although it did help a little with the nerves.
The tteokbokki looks about ready, so he reaches over for her bowl and begins scooping up the eggs, the noodles, the rice cakes, the fish cakes, everything, even the cheese from the side. Yeah, that’s right, he ordered cheese too. Take that, Jun-wan. Who’s a cheapskate now?
The table next to them is loud, and bits of their conversation drift over.
‘Sweetie, isn’t that cute? Should we try denim shirts for our next couple look?’
He makes a mental note to wear this shirt more often. Maybe buy a second one too, just in case.
Gyeo-ul seems oblivious to the mutterings next to her. He follows her gaze and finds it stuck on the rosary bracelet around his wrist. For a brief moment, he stills, before extending the bowl in his hand to her. Her fingers graze his as she takes it, and he has to remember to breathe normally.
He’s only mildly surprised at the speed with which she wolfs down her food. She finishes just as he’s done filling up his own portion, so he grabs her bowl again.
‘Professor, you’re friends with a lot of people too,’ she offers, perhaps in a misplaced attempt to comfort him over what she interpreted as concern over competition to his own popularity. He glances at her. ‘They call you Buddha.’
‘I’m Catholic,’ is his automatic response. It blurts out before he can stop himself, and he watches her visibly deflate. In another life, it might have been a comical sight. In this life, he’s considering offering himself up to Ik-jun’s martial arts expert sister as a no-holds-barred punching bag.
Now is the time to say it, but he can’t find the words. So instead, he simply hands over the bowl to her again. It’s hard to ignore the tinge of disappointment that creeps up when she manages to avoid contact with his hand this time round.
There will be other chances, he thinks. I can tell her any other time. There’s an endless expanse stretched out in front of them. The more he repeats it, the more he convinces himself. So. So...
‘About the patient for tomorrow’s surgery. Kim Dong-woo,’ he brings up instead, and she nods readily. As expected, she’s brought herself up to speed on everything already.
The conversation flows much more freely as they lapse onto this well-traversed territory. But he wasn’t taking her out for dinner so they could have pretty much the exact same exchange they do almost every day in the hospital. Then again, why was he taking her out tonight? Truthfully, it was almost on impulse. He was just feeling good earlier today. He had thought, I might as well, I already said I would. I could give myself this.
Her hair, loose, untied, keeps spilling over her face. His fingers thrum on the table, itching, eager to reach out. He plants his hands under his thighs instead, almost sitting on them, willing them to settle.
They’re still talking about little Kim Dong-woo when she gingerly takes his empty bowl and starts filling it up with the last of the tteokbokki left in the pot. He looks on, and breathes in, and –
‘Let’s do dessert too.’ He swallows. The words roll around in his mouth, foreign. It’s as if he is listening to someone else speaking. ‘There’s a nice bingsu place around here.’
It’s so fucking unfair to feel this happy over a nod.