Work sagged and dragged. New internship period had started, and all the interns had been sent to their very first clinical rotation; the anaesthesiology and resuscitation department was the house to four interns who always came early with their chart tasks half done. This time of the year was when Huisoo found her job a lot more emotionally and physically challenging. Even anaesthesiology alone was a varied specialty. One could never know what each day was going to hold; relieving pain on the labour ward, resuscitating a sick patient in emergency care, or participating in an elective theatre list and chronic pain clinic. 

Ideally, tasks would feel less fatiguing with interns joining the team, but realistically, a typical day would still start before 8am, involving unsocial hours—the usual. And now she and other senior department staff had to deal with training and supervising interns in both critical care and anaesthesia; to say the least.

Things at work had reached a misery point where she had to remind herself why she had chosen to be an anaesthetist instead of a dentist over and over again just so she could force herself to drive to work (believing dentists had less likeliness to be rung up at 2 in the morning for emergency matters).

Things with her fiance had not been a muse either. Not with him to be exact. It was only that… there had been higher degrees of drama in his household. Having been spending a short one year being an unofficial guardian of three, she had been spending her days bracing herself.

Even on hectic days, she could not get over the memory of coming home to a pair of teachers announcing Kim Sejong’s 12-days of absence with no news at school in the second term of the year. Mysteriously, the official letters that school had tried to send to ‘Kim Sejong’s guardians’ had never reached the house; hence the urgency for home visit.

Not long after, she found herself again attending a disciplinary commission meeting for school bullying which dragged Kim Inhwa along the way. It was hard to believe that she had to experience all of these before the age of forty.

And what would she make of that?

She was meant to be a serene, all-knowing, merciful person who could handle every situation. She was surprised too, for the fact that she could face it all as if it was not her first time.

Maybe she thought, having been shoved up against Jongin’s life, had taught her about being parents while not actually being one. When she was being dismissive or neglectful, she would leave scars upon her charge. Yet, if she was supportive, loving, encouraging, and praising them for even their smallest achievements (like getting out of bed on time or for not spending the night outside again), it would ruin them in different ways.

She figured that if one was not a legitimate parent, all these things were relevant, only she or he—would have none of the natural authority to expect even when feeding or looking after another person.

“You can’t just collapse here,” She said, touching her temple with a restrained move. Kim Jongshin had heavily bumped against the wall. A strong smell of alcohol filled the room.

          “I’m sorry, Nuna, I didn’t mean to—” He attempted a conscious reply before finally collapsing on the carpeted floor of the living room.

“Oppa, get yourself together! At least make it to your room, huh!” Inhwa said, crouching down to her brother’s level.

“Forget it, Inhwa. Get Sejong here, we’ll have to move your brother to his room.” Huisoo sighed and touched Jongshin’s shoulder. He was letting out a small snore.

She sighed, waited a few minutes for Sejong or Inhwa to remove their brother’s dirty boots, but ended up doing it herself.

“It’s not my fault. I didn’t even want a degree at the very first place.” He chattered subconsciously.

Huisoo propped him on his side for a recovery position so he would not choke. Upsetting as his childish behaviour was, she could not be angry. She kept recalling  the hurt on his face after a furious argument with Jongin who got to say the last words.

“If you can’t do it for your sake, fine. But even pets show gratitude to their master...”

She knew that Jongshin’s decision to quit university was arguably wrong, he did not even discuss the matter with his family, but it was not an excuse for Jongin to be rude.

Jongshin was the polar opposite of Jongin.

He did not nurture hurt, nor contain it. He went out, got drunk, and did everything to forget. When Jongin loved puppies and chicken, Jongshin seemed to have no hobby or a biassed preference toward food or other likings. He talked to anyone in the convenience store that happened to cross his path—and seemed to expect everyone he met to dislike him. But of course he could be charming when he wanted to be, but people never liked him that much.

“I know what you mean.” She replied, adamant.

Sometimes she thought, she too, had changed a lot since she met them. It was not just that she learned to deal with the explosion of teenage rebellions; perhaps, she actually wanted to be there; to witness the shifts of mood or even the hardest way Inhwa and Sejong had learned to acknowledge their mistakes and to be sorry about them.

The youngest, Inhwa, was pure and clueless about her surroundings and even herself. That was partly the reason why she sometimes got herself into something that she had not even intended to do. She constantly asked questions to Huisoo about literally everything. Not because she was chatty–she was never chatty–she just really had no idea what was going on with the world. What she perceived as a 16 was that people around her were either friends or not friends, and that it was a matter of course to side with ‘friends’ whatever it took. She fell into the popular narratives of loyal and cool friendships who always stand up for each other and clean each others’ mess.

She called Hui Soo an uncool adult for saying, “Have I ever told you to hate cats the same way I hate them just because we’re close? Sweetheart, that’s not friendship, that’s alliance. Friends don’t coax each other into hating the same person they do.”

When Jongshin and Inhwa were quite expressive about their thoughts, Huisoo had learned the most bitter way of trying to understand Kim Sejong. The boy had been giving her quite a headache for some time now. Ever since the skipping-school case, Huisoo had been trying to communicate more with him but it turned out he suggested that it might be a good idea if Huisoo did not quiz him about anything again next time.

“I have no friends and I t