Jihoon inhales the toxic taste of the tobacco deeply, waits a second and then exhales, watching the smoke create a cloud in the cold night air.

The click of a door opening behind him signals the shattering of his silent reprieve.

“Oh, sorry to bother you, doctor. Didn’t realise you were out here,”

Jihoon turns to see a nurse, vaguely familiar. Dark hair that falls into big, kind eyes. He must be a hit with all the kids. Jihoon turns back to stare at the stars.

He gets a precious few moments of silence before he takes another drag of the cigarette and hears the nurse speak.

“I don’t get why so many doctors smoke. It baffles me,”

Jihoon turns to him, then blows out the smoke, keeping his blank expression.

“Maybe sometimes we want someone to fix us up at the end of all this,” Jihoon murmurs, turning back to the sky, “the way we try to fix everyone else,” and then doesn’t say another thing.

It’s another month before Jihoon finds himself outside the same side entrance, blowing smoke at the stars, and he’s interrupted by the same nurse.

He’s learnt his name by now. Choi Seungcheol. A year older than Jihoon, and worked at the hospital two years longer. He’s popular with the kids, like Jihoon expected. They share a few patients.

“Smoking again, Dr. Lee?” he asks.

“Am I needed somewhere?” Jihoon asks, taking another long drag from the cigarette. There’s never a quiet moment in the hospital. Jihoon had gotten used to that a long time ago.

Seungcheol chuckles softly and Jihoon turns to look at him, cigarette between his lips. “No, you’re not, doctor. I just wanted to see if I would find you here,”

Jihoon stares at the cold brick of the pathway he’s standing on. “Well, you found me,” he says, turning back to the stars, going back to inhaling toxic smoke.

“You don’t smoke often, do you?”

Jihoon breathes it out. “Sometimes.”

“When surgery fails?”

Jihoon wants to be surprised he’s been figured out so quickly, but he’s just thinking of the deafening sound of the heart rate monitor giving a flat heartbeat, after they failed to resuscitate the recent patient. Jihoon tried seven times. The other surgeon had to put a hand on his arm to stop him trying again.

“When someone dies when I’m trying to save them,” Jihoon corrects softly.

At first, Jihoon thinks he’s just getting careless.

It’s a little while later, but after another loss, he gets outside to grieve beneath the stars, only to find that the box of cigarette usually in his pocket is missing, and instead, there’s a pink lollipop in his coat pocket.

“Ah, I must have picked up Naeun’s jacket instead,” Jihoon murmurs to himself. He grabs a cigarette off a colleague and smokes under the stares and tries not to think of the closed eyes of the patient who died on the operating table.

But then it continues to happen, lollipops accumulating in his pocket and his cigarette boxes disappearing. After one occasion in which Jihoon can’t find anyone who can give him a cigarette, he ends up sulking as he on a green lollipop and stares at the stars. It’s not the same - he doesn’t get that same feeling of burning his insides to join those he failed to save sooner; but it’s bearable.

Jihoon doesn’t cry. He only ever cried over losing patients in that first year. It’s been six years now, so Jihoon has learned how to swallow the numbing pain.

He still grieves though. He grieves a lot. He grieves by craving a little slice of death.

“Doctor?”

Jihoon looks up over his clipboard to see the nurse, Seungcheol, staring at him. Seungcheol still sometimes comes outside, when it’s his shift and he hears that an operation wasn’t successful, but not always. They don’t usually talk much, just a few sentences exchanged, but they’re always profound. Maybe because Jihoon is always emotional at those times.

“What?” Jihoon asks around the white stick in his mouth. Seungcheol points out said stick.

“Oh, it’s just a lollipop. You want one? I have too many,” Jihoon says.

“Why do you have too many lollipops?” Seungcheol asks as Jihoon fishes in his pocket and hands the nurse one (and leaving one by the bedside of the sleeping patient).

“Not entirely sure,” Jihoon muses softly as he reads over the patient’s information. “My cigarette pack keeps disappearing and lollipops replace it. I don’t know if it’s a prank or not, since I’m not even a sweet tooth, but I’ve accumulated too many lollipops, so I’ve taken to eating them at my desk,” Jihoon says, too busy reading the profile to see the smile that Seungcheol tries to force down.

Jihoon makes a note in his own notebook before putting the clipboard back at the end of the patient’s bed. “When the patient wakes up, reduce her dosage of the painkiller. If she still complains about the pain after three days, let me know and I’ll review again,” Jihoon says and Seungcheol nods curtly. Jihoon glances at his notebook once more before nodding and turning to leave.

“Oh, doctor?”

Jihoon turns back to Seungcheol smiling gently at him. “You could give some of those lollipops to the children. I’m sure they’ll love you,”

Jihoon looks at him blearily. “I don’t know if I want them to,” he deadpans and Seungcheol laughs easily.

“Smoking again?

Jihoon turns away from the stars to see Seungcheol stepping out into the cool night air.

“Yeah,” he says softly, taking another long drag of the cigarette.

“I didn’t know you had an operation scheduled today,” Seungcheol says.

Jihoon closes his eyes. Breathes out smoke. “I didn’t,” he says. “He died when it wasn’t my shift,”

“Then is it really your fault? Can you really blame yourself for that?”

“He was still my patient.”

Jihoon offers Seungcheol a cigarette as the nurse steps up beside him. Seungcheol raises an eyebrow and shakes his head. Jihoon shoves the cigarette box back into his pocket and offers him a lollipop instead. Seungcheol gives him a wry smile and takes it, the two of them wordlessly looking at the stars, white sticks between their lips.

“Cigarette pack missing again?”

Jihoon just rolls the lollipop around his tongue in response. Seungcheol smiles warmly.

“I feel like someone is doing this on purpose, but I can’t fathom how, or why,” Jihoon mutters. “If they wanted to steal cigarettes, they wouldn’t put replace it with lollipops,”

“Then they probably have a reason,” Seungcheol says.

Jihoon sighs, rolls the lollipop in his mouth again, tasting the strawberry sweetness. “Probably,”

“Is it really such a bad thing?” Seungcheol asks, “It looks like it’s fixing a bad habit,”

“It might have been a bad habit, but it helped me cope,” Jihoon says, shoving his hands in his pockets and just scratching his skin against lollipop wrappers. He offers one to Seungcheol.

“You can cope through other methods,” Seungcheol takes the offered lollipop.

“Why fix something that isn’t broken?” Jihoon murmurs

“Because maybe fixing it can help improve it anyway,”

Jihoon turns to him suddenly, eyes narrowing at him. “Why are you so insistent? Do you know who it is?”

Seungcheol sighs like Jihoon is dense. He doesn’t understand. He’s frowning as Seungcheol steps up to him, towering over him slightly that makes Jihoon keenly aware of the fact Seungcheol is taller than him (but everyone is taller than him).

“I like the lollipop stick between your lips better than a cigarette,” Seungcheol says, face too close. Before