Warning: UN-BETA'D. Pre-maturely posted. Depressing. Talks about cancer, a lot. Also, I'm no doctor-- don't take any medical information I spit out of here too seriously. The cast consists of mainly SMTown, but there are a few other idols here and there, too. Keep an open mind?




Noises. Voices. The soft pitter patters of rushed footsteps, over and over again.

Everyone here was chosen; be it the doctors, the researchers, the nurses, the assistants, or the people being tested. Not a single person here is nameless, none of them unrecognized by any other person in the building.

They were each so familiar with everyone else, some would label them family.

“Himchan was reassigned to study Prototype D’s today.”

Victoria chews silently on her food, fingers clamped over the silver lining of her spoon. Lounge food here was awful, but only by her standards. “Oh? Who’s going to replace him to take charge of the Treatment Ward then?”

“The decision is still under consideration,” Sunhwa says. “Rumor has it his loved one didn’t survive the immense cell growth and lost their battle against their disease. He requested to be transferred from nursing to investigation.”

“Wouldn’t he be too unstable for the position then?” Victoria wonders aloud.

Sunhwa shrugs. “Maybe they think the rage will fuel him instead of defeat him.”

“Hopeful.” Victoria chuckles. She glances at her tray of food and pokes her spoon into the plate of curry, drawing circles into the liquid. “It’s a cycle, really; you watch someone go, you get angry, you feed your anger into your work, you realize how cruel reality is when you discover nothing, and then you lose any of the hope you ever had left over again.”

“But you never gave up,” Sunhwa comments. “Even after Liyin left, you still keep going.”

Victoria looks up at the younger girl, smiling weak. “But I’m not trying to find a cure, Sunhwa-ah. I’m only studying the process, hoping that, in the very least, I will know whether or not Liyin left in skin-searing, flesh-slitting pain or if it was peaceful and quiet.”

“Unnie—“

A folder falls flat beside Victoria’s platter, the person dropping it sliding into the seat across from her beside Sunhwa.

“What’s this?” Victoria asks.

The man grins, eyes disappearing into black lines across his bright face. “The volunteer we told you about a few days ago from South Korea passed the health inspection. He was placed into the Prototype A section as we predicted, so he was flown here last night. They’re getting him to finish some final paperwork before you’ll have to meet with him in the conference room downstairs.”

“Then what’s with your creepy smile?” Sunhwa asks, scrunching up her face.

He beams. “Haven’t you heard about Himchan?”

Neither of the girls understands what he’s getting at. “What of it?”

“Well, now that he’s over in the Research department, Suho is being moved to the Treatment Ward, which means I won’t have to deal with his nagging anymore in HR! Isn’t that great?” He laughs.

Sunhwa and Victoria roll their eyes at him.

“And this is the story of how Kwanghee goes crazy without someone to strap him down.” Victoria teases.

Sunhwa nods.

Eventually, Kwanghee breaks out into gossip with Sunhwa and Victoria fades away into her own world again. She drums her fingers over the new profile she’s been graced with, tips sliding over the outline of the folder.

Something always clenches at her chest when she receives a new case.

It’s another life she’s been assigned to analyze and record; it’s another person she will have to get to know, watch suffer, stagger, and then, as the experimenters induce them with their so-called “cures” and “treatments”, she will be the one hearing the discontent, writing down all the things that go right and wrong.

Yet, despite it all, this is something she has to do. These are all things she wants to know, no matter what the outcomes of it may be.

Slowly, her eyes glide over the name on the tab sticking out of the folder. Bang Yongguk, it reads. Although it is a name that is foreign to her now, it runs smoothly on her tongue when she tests it with her voice.

“What?” Sunhwa asks.

Victoria shakes her head.

Bang Yongguk, she thinks. I wonder how far you will make it in this journey with me.





He’s already sitting inside of the dimlit room when she makes it there a quarter past two.

“Nice to meet you,” she greets with a, hopefully, warm smile. “My name is Victoria, and we will be working with each other often in the near future.”

Bang Yongguk parts his lips to say something, but then clenches his jaw and swallows his words.

“Do you have any questions for me?” Victoria then asks tentatively.

He contemplates for a moment before speaking, the depth of his voice catching her off-guard. “Are you the Doctor?”

Victoria shakes her head. “I am not. I’m a researcher; I do not conduct experiments, nor do I perform any of the procedures on our patients. My job is simply to record results, speak with patients throughout the testing, and be here for you when you call for help.”

“What exactly do you research?” Bang Yongguk asks, seemingly a little more interested.

She sets her clipboard on the conference table and leans back in her chair, arms crossed over her chest. “I studied Humanities when I first started college, before I got into medical researching and cell biology,” she explains, “now, I study both when being faced in situations such as the one you are about to engaged yourself into.”

“Suffering? Pain? Fear?” He cautiously supplies.

Victoria shakes her head. “I don’t know. That’s why I’m here, to study it. What about you? Why are you here?”

The man’s expression falters a little, eyes lowered to the ground beneath him. Victoria searches into his face then, taking in every feature of his for the first time since she’s stepped into the room.

He’s got broad shoulders, a distinct and sharp jawline, hard eyes that seem to be able to easily tell stories his prominent lips may refuse to tell. She can tell he’ll be very good at endurance—his entire existence seems to narrate a story of willfulness and strength.

“I’m penniless, homeless, and I’ve got no one to turn to for help.” Yongguk finally responds. “This will probably be the only way for me to survive.”

Victoria smiles at him then. Ironic, she thinks. He’s come to a place of false hope and recurring deaths in search of survival.

“How many people have made it out of here alive?” Yongguk questions.

Her smile does not falter. “Has anyone found a cure for cancer yet?” She asks.

Staring at the girl sitting across from him, Yongguk doesn’t move a single muscle.

Victoria slowly leans forward, elbows on the surface of the table. “If you know the answer to my question, I’m sure that, in turn, answers the question of your own.”





“How is Yixing’s progress?” Luhan asks Victoria.

She raises a single brow, handing her binder of notes over to the doctor. “Shouldn’t you know better than I would?”

“You’re the one studying him all day long,” Luhan laughs, “I simply take doses, measure them until they are suitable for our prospects, and then induce them as needed; nothing more, nothing less.”

Victoria watches as Luhan reads through her notes, his brows knitting together tightly. When his eyes travel to the glass, peering at the sleeping boy inside the room, Luhan lets out a sigh. “Sometimes I wish they would stop with the toxoids,” he says, “but they insist on believing it’s harmless.”

“Isn’t it?” Victoria asks to humor him, but she knows the answer.

Luhan hands her notes back to her wordlessly, walking closer to the glass.

For any normal person, toxoids would indeed help enhance their defense system, but for people who are diagnosed with cancer, any irrational amount of antitoxin entered into their body would only hasten the growth of their cell development, especially liver cancer.

Although scientists are aware of this, they insist that they might be able to discover a cure with this toxin for other cancers.

“I hear Zhoumi will be working with you on your new patient,” Luhan suddenly says, interrupting their moment of silence. “Hopefully you’ll have better luck with your team assigned for that case.”

Victoria bites down on her bottom lip. “Hey, Luhan.”

“Hm?” Luhan hums, turning back to Yixing and watching as the boy slowly stirs awake, the pupil of his eyes dark and his skin pale.

Pain strikes the both of them, but tears no longer come. They both know that Zhang Yixing won’t have much longer if this continues, but what are either of them to do? This is their job; they both knew the high probability of this type of conclusion.

“Do you remember your first day here?” Victoria asks.

Luhan laughs. “No,” he replies honestly. “Funny, I seem to remember everything but how and when I started here.”

“Me too,” Victoria says, closing her eyes as she reaches for the button to start the microphone. “I don’t remember much either.”

Heading for the door, Luhan takes one last glance at both Victoria and Yixing before he exits the study. Victoria takes a deep breath, forcing herself to hold still as her fingers push down on the button.

“Welcome back.” She says, and her voice is translated into a robotic one—one consisting of much less life and even less emotion. “What is the last memory you can recall, Zhang Yixing?”






Zhoumi has just thrown his robe on when Victoria enters the control booth to Bang Yongguk’s testing room. She throws a pair of gloves to him before slipping into the seat in front of the microphone, switching on the computer monitor.

“Getting close to the end of your day yet, Mimi?” She asks.

The doctor clears his throat and slaps the gloves on. “Almost. I was hoping we could start on this case tomorrow so I could speak with Kris about our patient Liu Yiyun, but it seems like the geneticist on that case wants to wait another two days.”

“Who?”

Zhoumi shrugs. “A new guy; I think his name is Changmin. I’ve run into him a few times, but I haven’t really gotten to know him.”

“Ah, Changmin,” Victoria nods. “He’s… a character.”

“I’m going to go easy today, Qian-ah,” Zhoumi says, “his background check indicates that he’s perfectly clean of any drug use and his health is near-perfect, but it actually worries me more than anything.”

Victoria nods. “Whatever you see fit, Mi.”

“Well, what do you think?” Zhoumi prompts. “I’m assuming you’ve already gotten to speak with him on a one-on-one basis.”

The younger girl nods again, closing her file and tapping her fingers gently on the table counter. “Since we are working with Prototype A treatment, and he’s in what we Researchers would call a super studious condition, I wouldn’t worry too much about speed. We should pay more attention to the smaller reactions we get from him and, if I’m reading his statistic correctly, ultimately the amount you induce into him will be a direct mirror of how well his body will respond to it.”

“Super studious,” Zhoumi repeats. “Interesting.”

Victoria laughs. “It just means he’s hyper aware of everything around him, which will affect his emotional response to the tests being conducted on him. His physical response, however, shouldn’t be unnatural.”

“That must have been the problem with Yixing,” the doctor replies. “He was too unaware of his own biological reactions; and his mental capacity of deciphering what was to happening to him after wasn’t great enough.”

She stares up at him. “Luhan told you?”

Zhoumi shrugs. “Doctors share information. We actually are able to help each other, unlike researchers.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Victoria purses her lips.

The older doctor pats her on the shoulder twice before pressing a button on his caller. A voice automatically responds, giving him a time and the limitation to the amount of time he is allowed to spend with Bang Yongguk.

Victoria watches as the automatic door slides open and a nurse, Jieun, enters with a tray of needles.

“Watch well,” Zhoumi tells Victoria, following behind the nurse to the door leading to Bang Yongguk’s firm. “You’ve only got one chance to witness something like this.”

Victoria doesn’t understand at first, but when she sees Yongguk erect in his seat, when she sees him furrow his brows only slightly but every muscle in his body tightens, she slowly comprehends.

This is a new test. Bang Yongguk is aware that he’s being put into a theory that has never before been tried.

Only Victoria hadn’t known and perhaps it’s because she’s a researcher; researchers are often kept in the dark and are encouraged to keep their thoughts to themselves during the process of a testing, because what they say consist of no true critical value to a testing. Their thoughts are simply thoughts, whereas their notes are factual and of truth.

A doctor may ask a researcher for an opinion but they will not put it into consideration when standing in front of a board during a meeting, despite using the full body of their notes to support their findings.

“Tell me if it becomes uncomfortable,” Zhoumi tells Bang Yongguk in Korean that is thickly accented.

Victoria watches intently; Bang Yongguk’s veins transform from a light green into a dark blue as the fluid runs from the crease of his elbow to the tip of his fingers and up to his neck. He grits his teeth, but does not say a word.

Zhoumi slowly presses down on the needle with a cotton ball before removing it from Bang Yongguk’s flesh.

He says, “This injection will be stoic inside your body for two days; after two days, the color should start fading and gradually odd symptoms should start showing in your body. Memory loss is a possibility after a while, because this injection is meant to extract certain oxygen cells from your brain to slow down specific biological processes in your body. Time is not of essence here, but it will be kept count by Victoria on your part. I’ll be back in a few days, unless otherwise requested of either of you. Please, do not hesitate to speak with either of us if you feel the need.”

At that, Zhoumi nods politely at Yongguk and heads for the exit. Yongguk looks around himself; the room is whitewashed, but there are necessities and electronics that are there to keep him occupied.

Victoria reaches for the microphone switch and takes a deep breath.

“Welcome, Bang Yongguk-ssi.” She says, and Yongguk is slightly started by the robotic voice that greets him in his mother tongue. “To your right, there is a remote control. The yellow button at the top calls for anyone that is available in the control booth. The button with the phone symbol calls for your researcher, Victoria; the stethoscope calls for your doctor, Zhoumi.”

Yongguk reaches for the remote and examines it.

“When you find that you’d just like someone to talk to, I’ll be more than glad to hear you out.”

He smiles then. It’s the first time Victoria has seen him smile, though small, and it tugs on the strings of her heart. For a man that appears as tough and cold as Yongguk, he has a warm and precious smile that she hadn’t expected.

Looking up, he searches for a camera.

Victoria chuckles. “There are no cameras in your room, Bang Yongguk-ssi. Nothing will be recorded into video. The only recording we do here will be by hand and ink.”

“Why? He asks.

Pondering over the reason, Victoria bites down on the end of her pen. “Respect, I suppose.” Is what she settles on, “Respect and privacy.”

A/N: I just want to say that this short-story is very much inspired from events I am experiencing in real-life. My brother and one of my closest friends were both diagnosed with cancer recently; my brother is currently receiving chemotherapy and my friend is going to have surgery on next month. Not to mention, a co-worker of mine was also diagnosed with a disease and will also be getting surgery in his kidney in a few weeks. Just two nights ago, my oldest dog broke free from the yard and was hit by a car-- her spine was broken and the doctor had to put her down. To all the readers who find this story, I just hope this story brings a little bit of insight to you and inspires you to cherish life and everyone around you. Life really is a fragile thing and there's not much we can do about it; all we can do is try our best, love those dearest to us, and then let life do the rest.

Thank you for reading, and please do anticipate the next chapter!

-Xue