Gala day - 5p.m

Hongkong Authority Hospital

It was a rare afternoon when Mark and Lucas could enjoy the end of the day by having coffee served in the paper cup that they took away from the coffee store downstairs and enjoy an afternoon stroll on the foyer of the Hospital’s fourth floor. The autumn air brushes their skin as Lucas uplifts his turtle neck to reach the tip of his chin. Mark, on the other hand, slips one of his hand to the pocket of his white coat.

“Do you know Coldplay will have their concert in Hongkong next week?”

Lucas shrugs his shoulders, allegedly not giving much surprise to Mark. Even if there is any good fun out there that could earn Lucas some bucks, Mark would bet that the latter will still choose to stay safe and sound with a cup of earl grey tea and some medical research journal under his roof.

“Apparently they are.” Mark mumbles, his hand shows a pair of Coldplay concert tickets that he took from the pocket of his coat.

“I thought you’re going to visit your Father in the US next week?” Lucas takes a sip of latte from the paper cup he holds. He stops in the midway and leans his elbow on the fence of the foyer where he could see commotion of people who attend the Gala in the Hospital hall right across his place from the above.

“I didn’t buy this.” Mark follows Lucas to lean his elbow and has his figure facing the latter. “…this is from Win-ge, and now it’s yours because I don’t need it.” the shorter of the two slips the tickets to Lucas’ white coat as he starts mumbling one of Coldplay’s songs. Mark knows Lucas won’t use it anyway since his friend is a claustrophobic who could not stand a small space in the crowd.

“It doesn’t sound like him?” Lucas has his brows knitted. He is a bit taken aback as he takes out the tickets and finds a ‘VVIP’ stamp on it. Knowing how Winwin has long declared himself as Coldplay number one fan, it is just absurd to witness that the guy was being all generous by buying not only one, but two Coldplay tickets for Mark.

“I know. Actually his head is not on the game since this morning. I don’t know what happened to him. He almost killed somebody today.”

“The heck?” Lucas cannot believe what he just said since he has known Winwin for almost three years now, and what he judged from the latter is that Winwin is not a person who easily slips away any step in the surgery procedure and his crafts are always textbook. Even the mentors in their Hospital always favor Winwin’s opinion when they are in a difficult situation.

“He co-lead a surgery this morning and the patient got DIC1 post-op. dr. Chang later identified that one of the possible causes is surgeon error.” Mark started his explanation, and his figure is now facing upfront with both hands hanging on the fence, still holding the paper cup.

Lucas unconsciously follows the gesture of his bestfriend’s and when he takes another sip of his latte, he saw a familiar figure gets off of an SUV with a pair of navy blue tuxedo belongs to him.

That orange hair.

Suddenly Lucas forgot how to close the small gap between his lips for a moment as he engulfed the view.

“….and dr. Chang was right because basically Win-ge made mistake when he did the closing. Turned out he squeezed the artery between two clamps—”

At this point, Mark’s explanation becomes blurry to his ears somehow—

“—and he ruptured the aortic wall.”

It is Kim Jungwoo.

“—causing a pseudo-aneurysm.”

—and he was taken back to his reverie of the conversation he had earlier in the morning.

“You could choose whatever you want, since our size is about the same and I am not going to wear any of them today.” Lucas took Jungwoo to his walk-in closet and they paused at the glass door drawer where Lucas stored all of his tuxedo and suits for formal occasion.

“But your legs are a bit too long for me, I always fold the tip of your jeans though. But I don’t think it’d look good for tux.” Jungwoo had his finger on the bottom of his lips when he saw the diverse colours of the tux in front of him.

Lucas took out a pair of navy blue tux that was quite hidden under the other black tux. Judging from the look, Jungwoo was quite sure that it was either new or Lucas did never bother to wear it.

“I only wear this once during my graduation night back then in Seoul.” Lucas reminisced how he bought this pair because his batch forced him to wear navy blue colour for the sake of uniformity during the party. “It’s a bit small for me and did not even cover quarter of my legs.” He joked and after a bit discussion and debate between the two, Jungwoo received the navy blue tux that Lucas handed for him to try.

Either this world is an ugly place to live or Jungwoo is way too beautiful in Lucas’ eyes, because some moments later after Jungwoo got out from the dressing room, Lucas is always surprised and has his jaw almost dropped by watching how fit (again) his suit on Jungwoo. His pale skin always matched well with any outfit and Lucas swears that he never looks anyone as attractive as the creature in front of him right now.

“It fits.” Jungwoo muttered, backfacing Lucas as he looks at himself in the miror. “..what do you think?”

What do I think? Lucas repeats Jungwoo’s question mentally. For him, Jungwoo had more than succeeded to pull the look effortlessly and it took Lucas by an impulsivity to reach the paler from his back. When Lucas was about to complete the gesture of backhugging him, the taller was taken by his sanity and suddenlly landed his hands on both side of Jungwoo’s shoulders as he awkwardly massaged it.

“It looks better on you.” is all he could say, while his brain is still processing and cursing on how he was about to endanger himself with such unnecessary action. He still massaged the paler when suddenly Jungwoo turned his back to face Lucas and there were only some inches apart to make their noses each other when Jungwoo suddenly broke the ice. “I will go by this.” showing his happy grin.

Lucas took two steps back carefully and scraped the back of his neck when suddenly he got a better idea to stir the conversation. He took out one of his phones on the pocket and handed it to Jungwoo.

“I have to go to the hospital now due to some urgent matters.” he muttered and showed how to work on the phone. “My number is on the speed dial as well as Jaehyun hyung’s. He has no problem if you want him to pick you up around 5, is it okay?”

Jungwoo received Lucas’ phone and mutters thank you inbetween his sm