in the course of your life, during the turbulent and calm times alike, you are aware that you have done a rather worryingly large number of mistakes, just as you are sure a stranger next to you have done. some of these mistakes of yours are life changing, while some of them are so little, and insignificant that only your pedantic, harsh mind, never anything else, could ever recall what they actually are and torment you for it.

you suppose that is just how it is. everyone is self absorbed in a way, a lot harsher to themselves than what could be considered healthy, and as a measure to survive, desperate as they may be, prioritised themselves much more than others, for people could walk in and out of their lives as easy as the elementary count of one, two, and three.

now, the mistake that you’ve done, it is something so ordinary, if you are to put a single defining means in place, so mundane that you don’t even take more than a second to consider it for what it could possibly be than what is clearly shown on the surface, the full gravity of it.

however, in your defense, it takes hardly a minute out of the usual rush of your work in the emergency room, perhaps even less than that. it is a quick glance at the television placed in the emergency room waiting lobby meant to be used by the patients’ next of kin, and then there is that occupied mind of yours, busy with figuring out the puzzles of symptoms thrown at you for possible diagnosis of your patients’ ailments, both of them maddening enough as a separate issue, but more troublesome when jumbled messily together, and you know all too well that being distracted by the both of them is never quite a good combination for you especially as you are on the clock.

the television, playing the news, is reporting on the discharge of a few high profile individuals after they served their imprisoned time. however, the names are unfamiliar to you, just as how they often are, you are not one to keep a close track of criminals of this sort, as more often than not, they are an individual hailed from a powerful family, ones who slipped and were caught from living their corruptive ways - but you should have known better.

you don’t think too much off of it initially of course, criminals are released everyday after they served their sentences. what difference does one more make when they are pushed back into the society?

but you learn the hard way later that you really should have paid more attention.

-----

perhaps you are just too naive. you’ve grown comfortable. or maybe it is the results of all the effort that you put to feel comfortable. somehow you have shaped yourself to be that way after getting a taste of happiness, of being so light you could fly off to the sky and not bother returning. but you are, you are so incredibly naive.

how could you not be?

after your failed proposal, seulgi’s made time for you, and it is a lot by any standards. she has pretty much moved in into your tiny apartment. half of your closet is filled with her tailored suits and well fitting shirts, and your kitchen’s cupboards and fridge alike are bursting with food, and though both of you know that you would be stuck in what could potentially be a continuous, downright spiral, not moving any further from where both of you stand, you have embraced the chance to be closer to her than ever, living together like how you have been for a month now, and you take it dearly to heart.

seulgi is babying you almost. although, you do have to admit that there is nothing for you to complain about at that point. you feel treasured, blessed, and most importantly, safe.

maybe that’s what made you think it is a wise idea.

however, you have also been through it a lot, much more than you would like to experience it again, ever.

is it all just a bad judgement? a circumstance that could have been prevented should you have been more tacit?

you have just finished your shift at the hospital, a little later at night, and you know seulgi is probably waiting for you to come home, you have both made a plan to watch one of seulgi’s favourite movie, and in all honesty, you are also looking forward to it, taking it as a chance to know seulgi better. one could say a person’s favourite story can act as a sort of mirror to their beliefs, to their love, to what makes the most of their strength, and you would never pass a chance to get to know her deeper and much more intimately.

however, as you are starting your car, you noticed a piece of paper slitted in between your car’s windshield and the rain wiper, making you let out an almost automatic sigh. have you forgotten to renew your monthly parking pass again? or are you blocking someone else's car for you to be subjected to yet another parking ticket?

you have heard complaints from the general public, usually written down on the discharge surveys, on how incredibly cruel the company managing the hospital’s parking lots are, that sometimes even the directors are not getting away scot free with their parking jobs, and them troubling even more so for the patients and their family.

(you have put this to further attention, of course, you’ve handed yerim a proposal that is already verified by the corporate office, to at least make more parking spots for the hospital’s staffs, perhaps even include a free shuttle to the nearest parking complexes so that the general public and employees alike would not be forced to park haphazardly inside the hospital’s compound)

you let out a small sigh as you get out from your car, wanting to inspect the parking summon and take a quick look at the validity of the parking pass that you have displayed on your car’s window. the parking summon should have always been the same, really, but you could always try and appeal for a discount as a staff.

but how incredibly wrong you are. the moment you take out the paper, there is a rush of footsteps behind you. an arm, strong and forceful, pushes a cloth to your mouth, damp with a substance that you know all too well - chloroform, the smell akin to a dangerous mix of nail polish and alcohol. in a haze of shock and your body going into a flight mode, you gasp, and with it you inhale that harmful substance into your lungs, and your body immediately goes into a frenzy. stop breathing, you tell your lungs, stop beating, you tell your heart, desperate. but the damage is done so quick to your primary functions that you aren’t capable of stopping, and your mind grows fuzzy, and just as quickly, you no longer have full control of your weakened body. you grow slack, and then your vision becomes pitch black.

-----

you wake up to an echo. the sound eerie as it just is, but once your vision comes back fully, the emptiness startles you. it is dark, and empty, and you can’t move. you take in a heave of breath, relishing in the little relieve you could that you are no longer affected by the chloroform. instead, your nose and lungs are attacked with a cloud of dust, and you cough, your body trembling, but held in place by a set of ropes bound around your wrist and chest, tied to a chair.

there is no one around the empty, dark room you are being held in. you try to make sense of it all. and it does come to you rather quickly, and you berate yourself for not being more careful about this.

you think back on doctor han jungwoo. you think of his pain, and how out of control it is. you think of his desperation for revenge, wanting a retribution to something that you had no control in, and you think of how it exposed you to a myriad of danger, though you have always been unaware of it.

doctor han jungwoo was an anaesthetist. and now you’ve gone and gotten yourself in trouble by being knocked out with an anaesthesia, and then taken away.

well, you suppose it is entirely your fault things have come this way.

you draw in more, deeper breath, trying to calm down and control the awful rush of your blood around your chest, but it is a rather useless effort.

you tap your feet on the cemented floor, somewhat luckily, they are not bound, and through the echo of the tapping sounds, you can make some guesses of where you are - in a basement, at least a floor underground, but that is about it. it painfully reminds you of the safehouse yerim brought you to save seulgi, once.

it does feel like it is such a long time ago.

you are no fool. you know that you have grown to be a weakness, a thorn in seulgi’s side for probably as long as you could remember, a liability of which made seulgi fear of what could happen to you, that she had to lie despite all her wants and love for you, all done for your own safety.

at this moment, you are not as scared as you think you should be.

seulgi would come to save you. of course she would.

except, not even a moment later, you ended up thinking it is not the best of ideas for her to come to your rescue. after all, this is obviously a trap, no matter from which point one should look at it. you are just upset that you had fallen into it oh so conveniently.

what does this person want with seulgi?

how did they know about you?

hasn’t yerim told you seulgi is always careful not to get the secret out?

but she is not invincible, and neither are you. you must have messed up somewhere. you could never really know who is watching you.

you tug on the ropes wound around your wrists, grunting when you feel your skin prickling from the friction against the rough ropes. it will blister and break out in red, painful rash later, you are sure, but you’re never really someone who would give up even with all the odds stacked up high against you.

your struggle, what little you can make of being tied to a chair, ends when in the darker end of the basement room, the sound of a door opening up can be heard. you gulp as footsteps near you, but are not sure if it is the same one that sounded when you were being knocked out earlier, but you figured it does not entirely matter at this point. you are still in grave danger.

you did not notice the light bulb hanging above you earlier, but now that it is switched on, you closed your eyes as a sudden ray of light blinds you, and you struggle to adjust to it.

there is a scraping sound now, one that you make out to be another chair being dragged closer to you, and then set a little distance away, and there is a rough, gruff huff being let out as someone settles heavily on it. you can’t see them clearly even with the lights on.

“aren’t you going to say something?” the gruff voice questions after a long period of silence, sounding impatient at how quiet you are being.

“what is there to say?” you question back. “i already know why you are doing this.”

there is a small movement in the dark, a shift of a heavy body, and there is a layer of amusement in his voice, not hidden too well. seulgi is a much better liar than this man. “oh? do tell.”

“i would love to say i don’t have any enemies,” you pause for a deep breath. “but i do. i was reminded of one not too long ago. but you are not here for me. you want seulgi.”

“you’re smart, i’ll give you that,” he says, and you hear him lean back to his chair by the creaking sound, his shoes scraping slightly against the floor. should none of you speak, the room is terrifyingly quiet. the stifling pause is then ended with a painful accusation. “ ...i didn’t know she was capable of loving someone.”

“yet here i am.”

“here you are.” he repeats, condescending in his tone.

“what is your relationship with her?” you throw another question, and hear more than see the sort of annoyance you are being because the man is suddenly standing up and cursing under his breath.

“i do the questioning here, not you.”

“were you released from prison just recently? it has been, what? a day or two? and now you’re already out for revenge?”

“silence!” he bellows, now stepping closer to you. he is a large, hulking man, and even as he gets closer to the single source of light in the entire room, you still cannot see his face. from your eye level, the light illuminates only up to his waist. “whatever it is that you know about her, they are all lies.”

“some truths,” you make a rebuttal. “i know she has killed, and so have i. you most probably have killed, too. who are you to judge?”

you expected to get hurt the moment you’ve come to in this dusty old basement room, but the mean fist he throws on you has the chair you are sitting on doubling back, and you fly along with it. you groan, still tied tightly to the chair, and the pain shoots up quickly from your torn left cheek.

“lady, you have no idea.” the man says, and then he walks around you, taking his sweet time to pull you back up and set on the chair upright again. “watch what you say.”

“you shouldn’t have been bothered by it too much.” you spit the blood out of your mouth, gathered from the cut inside your cheek. “if this is how you’d act when it is only me you're dealing with, i imagine you won’t fare too well once seulgi is here.”

he doesn’t say anything to that, content to just leave you alone as his retreating back puts more distance from you, before he disappears quietly in the dark, and the door to the basement is shut again.

-----

you have no idea what time it is now, as the dark room and the dust collected all around it makes it rather difficult to guess. and even though the pain from the punch is residing a bit, the constant friction from the ropes and how incredibly tight you are bound, they are giving you very little opportunities to rest.

which is, in a strange way, better for you, as your senses are heightened, and when you hear the door opening again, you are immediately focused on the new arrival.

now, you’ve met some terrible people in your life, and the amount of stupidity you have had to deal in an emergency room can never be put into a complete list, like parents refusing to vaccinate their children, a teenager who got hurt badly as a result of an idiotic dare his friends made, a woman who got pregnant not knowing a ual would get her pregnant, and all sorts of beliefs that are proven wrong by science, but are still accepted by some folks.

but this man? this man is truly a degenerate that you almost wish the bigger man earlier could have come back and annoy you instead.

his chuckles are already bone shivering nasty, and his excited steps as he nears you are not as calculated as the previous had been. you figured this is one of those useless henchmen in a group that causes more damage than good.

and you are proven so right when he comes into the light, a vile grin plastered on his face, permanently perhaps. his fingers trail down your bruised cheek down to your jaw, and he forces you to look at him. “boss is an idiot not to lay a finger on you.”

“are you blind? he already punched me.” now you know that the big man earlier is indeed the mob’s boss, and you also know that this is a good time as any to make use of the spit and blood you’ve got in your mouth. you spit at him when he draws his face closer.

“you ! you think you’re so ing smart?!” he retches in disgust, wiping the blood on his face and glaring at you.

you don’t think you could do much to stop him from reaching to your chest and abusing it, but you do feel good about spitting at him. he’s playing a dangerous game, and you wound up participating in it out of your choice. you don’t retaliate, not until the moment he tries to force his whole body onto you and looking for your lips that you launch your feet up to kick him where it is proven to be the most anatomically painful.

the scream that follows is hurtful to your ears, but the rough slice of your skin is much more painful.

he had brandished a knife and cut a line under your jaw, and your heart beats faster, knowing of how close he is to the carotid artery hidden deep inside your skin. you gasp, still fastened to place by the ropes, and your wrists struggle harder against the ties. i need to stop the bleeding!

and then in all of your distress, a shot rings out.

you don’t know what you are more surprised of as your eyes take in the sight of the man who tried to defile you lying on the ground, unmoving with his head blown and bleeding out; or the sight of the hulk of a man, looking down at you with an unreadable expression, finally showing you his face, aged well in his golden years, all grey and worn out, a smoking gun held in his hand.

“ghh-” you try to make a sound, wanting to ask why he would kill his own men, but you can’t. the blood spilling out of the cut is running down your neck faster than you would like (you don’t like bleeding at all) and you are digging yourself deeper and deeper into trouble.

“i can see why seulgi would fall in love with you.” he simply says as he puts the gun back to safety. he then calls in for more men to take the fallen henchman out, and you watch all this transpire, all the while trying to do everything you can to get your hands free. to add to your surprise, the ‘boss’ cuts off the ropes tying your body to the chair and your wrists. he then shoves a cloth to the bleeding cut. “you know what to do. you’re the doctor.”

you keep the wound pressured with one hand, breathing heavily. he takes your unoccupied hand, pulling it back, tying that to the chair, and then moving to get your legs bound as well, knowing that that is more of a danger to him now.

at least you know now that he needs you alive.

---