Kang Raena

When I woke up, I was wrapped nicely under my blankets. Yesterday’s events came back to me and I was surprised that I was even in my bed. We always had this habit to sleep in the living room. I made my way down, expecting to see the 17 people crowding around my living room but there wasn’t a single soul at the first level.

Where did they go?

“They’ve went home to prepare for work, Raena. All of them has their internship now too.” Seungyoon’s voice came from behind.

Oh, right. They were gone, as fast as the memory from last night. What was I thinking that waking up the next day would be exciting?

“Rae, all of you are growing up. Things change, and so do lifestyles, you all can’t just continue hanging around like university students.”

I turned back, abruptly,” But that’s what we are, we are university students under internship. I’m not out into the world yet.” I looked straight into my brother’s eyes.

He looked at me and sighed, letting Lae Ahn down from his hands.

“You get what I mean, at least I’ve heard pretty decent stories of our upcoming iKON performing extremely well in the company.” He tried to comfort me. It all just felt like a dream.

I went back up to change to my working clothes after a good bath and grabbed a toast from the table to gobble on as I stood at the bus stop, waiting for the bus to arrive and pick me up to the hospital. Within half an hour, I was back with my stethoscope and white coat on. I was back to checking on patients and arranging their charts.

When I had reached Jung Eun’s room, she greeted me by her whining sight.

“Doctor Kang, Senior Nurse doesn’t allow me to go to the hospital’s courtyard! I’ve to be stuck here for the rest of my life. I’d never get to see the outside world, ever!” She whined and gave me her best watery eyes.

I sighed, knowing that I had grown a soft spot for the girl after working here for a mere 15 days.

“I’d bring her out, Senior Nurse, at least you’d be in a peace of mind with me there.”

The senior nurse hesitated before slowly nodding and giving me a certain time to bring her back for her second round of injections. When we had reached the courtyard, Jung Eun sat on the swings and urged me to push her excitedly.

I’ve known that she had been stuck in the hospital room, hardly ever coming out ever since she was hospitalized 2 years ago. She would occasionally look out of the window and gushed, jealous about the kids that were playing at the grass patch on the ground level, and she was stuck up there, suffocated.

“Doctor Yeppeun, I want to try, ddeobokki.” Her eyes lit up as she talked about the food tent snack that we all had easy access to, it was a common food in Korea, but she had no chance to even taste it. She had a habit if calling me the beautiful doctor, at first I had told her to stop it but she continuously called me that, that I was just used to it and let her have her way.

“It’s a spicy food, how can a 8 year old girl like you handle that?” She grinned and leaned over, as though she was telling me a secret.

“Oppa told me that if I recover, he’d buy it for me. He said that he could wash off the spice for me.” I smiled as she spoke about her brother so lovingly. I had met her brother several times, he was a nice man. He told me that he was supporting