"Min Suh Young? Min Suh Young-ssi!" The charge nurse's grating voice snapped through her thoughts and brought her back to the present. Suh Young turned in her seat to face her superior, who sighed in exasperation.

"Suh Young-ssi, did you check up on the patient that was admitted last night?" 

"Yes." 

"Well then finish that report, because you've been staring at it for the past five minutes!" She looked at the younger nurse with the same fiery gaze that was famous for terrorizing all of the new nurses. But as expected, Suh Young merely assented, turning back to her paperwork and trying to bring her focus back to the present. The nurse on duty at the desk snickered. A co-worker and friend, she was a senior at the hospital as well and had been chatting with the charge nurse who had observed Suh Young's daze. "Ya. You know you won't ever be able to get to her that way," she teased. She's not as flighty as the others." 

"I know. I like it. But I can't lose my touch," she joked around, one of the fixtures in the comfortable family-like atmosphere that good hospitals tend to cultivate. She gave her head a tiny shake, though, as she spared a last sideways glance at Suh Young. As charge nurse, it wasn't only her job to ensure that her unit was running smoothly, she also considered it part of her job to make sure that everyone got along well and integrated themselves in at least one way into the medical team. But this particular young nurse. She didn't have a single connection yet. She wasn't bad with patients, but who did she have? She'd always been on the outside. She'd never even come to department get togethers. Had never participated in anything outside of work. Nothing. And it looked like she might stay that way. 

As for Suh Young, she'd been jumpy for the past few weeks. She'd run into Hyun Joong a few more times, but she was still scared of the fresh wave of pain each encounter could potentially bring. Ever since the late night pasta they'd shared, she'd cringed as her thoughts would often involuntarily return to her life before coming back to Seoul. They would dance tentatively around her memories, as if trying to see how far they could go before she managed to shut them down completely. 

She ran her eyes once again over the papers in front of her. Just don't think about it, she chanted again to herself. It was the mantra she'd been carrying around for the past few years, and this time would be no different than the others. But it is, her mind argued. Because now you have Hyun Joong.