"Is there any problem?" 

Yeonhee decides to ask when they're on their way to the hospital. Yixing has been drowning on his phone since they stepped out of the apartment, and she's wondering why he looks so serious. She doesn't care much about it at first because it seems personal and she doesn't want to sound like a nosy person. But seeing that even more than half the trip to the hospital he spends reading—what it seems that people's comments on something, which he usually spends it practicing the knotting with the shoelaces he ties in his bag, Yeonhee just knows that something is off.

And Yixing turns his head sideway when he hears her. He pauses before answering,

"Remember when you knocked on my door yesterday? Telling me that I have packages?" he asks back, and Yeonhee nods to replies to him. "So, at that time I was live on Instagram."

Yeonhee suddenly covers with her fingers. She was loud yesterday when calling him, was she interrupting his broadcast?

"Oh. I didn't cause you trouble, did I?"

"No, no." he shakes his head, "They know that I live with a roommate."

"But?"

"But they have no idea that it's a girl." Yixing takes a pause for another second to take a breath, "And now they're kind of demanding your appearance on my video."

"Oh,"

She has no idea how to reply to this. It's not that she refuses to be in Yixing's videos, after all, it's not like they're having an affair or something. It's just that, people in the hospital might also watch it, while they have been keeping this a secret. At least until now, except for Sehun, only Baekhyun and Sejeong know that they live in the same house.

Actually Yeonhee thinks that there's nothing wrong with sharing an apartment despite everything. It's purely friendship between them, and she believes there are many people out there who do the same thing with their friends. But at the same time, she must admit that they still live in a conservative environment. Housemating is still considered as violating moral values for some people, and she doesn't want to sum up unnecessary speculation about their friendship and make their relationship become unprofessional just because people think so.

"But you know what? It's not a problem, don't think about it too much. I'm just thinking about how to reply to them because there are so many messages. Maybe I'll just have another live tonight when everything goes well."

Yeonhee nods. She's relieved that Yixing voices her wish, and she really appreciates that he doesn't force her to grant his viewers' wishes. At the same time, she also understands what Yixing means by 'everything' is the surgery that they're about to do this morning.

Unlike her who tends to be calm through the morning helping the nurse prepping the patient and having rounds, Yixing is unusually silent in the process. He doesn't say anything when Sehun talks about the surgery plan with the operative team and only lets out a small smile when both Baekhyun and Sejeong encourage them before they're heading to the OR.

Yeonhee thinks that he's nervous because this is his first experience in the OR, and it's actually relatable because what he feels is actually very natural. And to be honest, she herself is nervous too because this is also her first open-surgery. But she has Sehun who doesn't hesitate to encourage her with a supporting tap and squeeze on her arm, and it's more than anything that she ever needs. And with everything, she just doesn't expect that Yixing's nervousness si actually caused by something else.

She finds out as they walk into the scrubbing room, she immediately wears the cap on her head the mask before starting to wash her hands. And that's when she sees him just staring at the cap box and freezes there for a couple moment.

"Yixing?" she calls for him, and it snaps him out.

"I'm fine," he says as he takes the cap and puts it on his head reluctantly.

Yeonhee frowns, she didn't say anything about him being fine or not. But now that he mentions it, she starts to question if he's really okay or not, because he's been acting so strange for the whole early morning. And she's not used to seeing him so silent, it just doesn't seem right.

"Don't look at me like that," he says as he catches her staring, "I have an ugly scar, I know. Don't remind me about it,"

She comes to realize what is happening right now. Yixing has been very sensitive when it comes to his scar, he doesn't like to show it to people like he despises to let it be shown. And she opens to say something about it, only to close it again a second later. Feeling slightly offended, she doesn't wait for him to finish hand scrubbing once she's done and head right to the OR immediately.

"Welcome to the OR, Doctor." the scrubbed technologist kindly greets her as she hands her towel to dry her hands and arms, and Yeonhee replies to her with the same tone of 'thank you' while she let the woman gown her and help her to put on her gloves.

Yixing follows a moment later as he places herself at the right side of the patient, looking insecure with the people's stare that he avoids everyone's eyes in silence. And realizing that the atmosphere is awkward with Yixing's silence, Yeonhee feels like she has to do something to break the ice.

"Do you have some rituals or magic words to say before you do the surgery?" she suddenly says, makes all pairs of eyes fixed on her. "You know, like that famous 'it's a beautiful day to save lives' saying?"

And she has everyone laughs at her remark, mentioning the famous quote that seems to be quite often as the start-up joke before the doctors start the surgery. The resident anesthesiologist then tells her about the neuro attending's unique ritual that he always has before doing the surgery. It's apparently a public secret where he is often seen sitting on the couch in the attending lounge, eyes closing, munching on a Choco pie, and lost in thought or in some sort of meditation.

Yeonhee is attentively listening when he tells her this story (that everyone apparently has known, besides her and Yixing, because they keep adding the details to it) of this one day of an early-morning case. They have already started the procedure and has just completed removing a large piece of the skull and exposing the brain, when the scrub technician casually asked the surgeon how he enjoyed his Choco pie that morning.

"And he froze. Like, literally not moving. I assumed he had just uncovered something extremely serious in the patient and didn't want to move. Then he looked up at the scrub tech and asked, 'What did you just say?' And the technician repeated his question and you know what he did?" Yeonhee shakes her head for the rhetorical question to let him continue with the story, 

"He paused, then immediately covered the brain with a moistened sterile surgical towel, told everyone not to proceed until he returned, then stepped back away from the patient, removed his gloves, and started taking off his surgical gown as he walked out of the OR. He returned after about 10 minutes later, scrubbed back in, and completed the case without any problems. Later on, I heard that he was seen running to the locker room, slamming open his locker, and digging into a box of Choco pie. Perhaps for the first time in his career, he had forgotten his pre-surgery ritual, and once that fact was brought to his attention, he couldn't continue with the surgery until it was done."

People laugh again at one of the historic days where the famous Dr. Choi Siwon forgot his Choco Pie and made the whole operation room in an uproar upon his sudden leave, thinking that the technician's question had offended him. Yeonhee catches Yixing's gaze on her when she joins the laughter, he's still as tense as he is, but she knows behind that mask, he smiles. And she's glad that he does.

When Sehun and Jongdae join them about three minutes later, everyone goes back to their own position. And being serious as he is, Sehun wastes no time to give the staff the last-minute rundown of the surgery before Jongdae starts making an incision on the patient's thigh to harvest two vessels from it. Yeonhee has no idea since when people started to fill the OR view room, but it's a full house by now. She sees Baekhyun and Sejeong, some interns from the other department and also some senior surgical residents there to support (or watch them hoping that they screw up) their first surgery. Yixing follows her gaze to give the view room a glance and has her attention back to Sehun as he asks the nurse to hand him the scalpel.

It's always interesting to watch Sehun doing surgery, but for Yeonhee, it's one hundred percent much more interesting because instead of being in the view room, she's standing right next to him at the moment. She watches Sehun without a doubt making an incision at the center of the patient's chest, and she's so excited as she helps him hold the forceps to open the area while he cuts more tissues to expose the bone.

Yixing helps Sehun to split the bone with a sternal cutter, then he pulls back the skin and tissues and holds it with a retractor when Sehun is done making another incision to pull back the pericardium. Yeonhee's attention is divided between Jongdae's announcement telling them that he has finished harvesting the vessels with the amazement of watching the beating heart with her own eyes.

"It's beautiful, isn't it?" Sehun says. Yeonhee gives him a glance and nods in agreement.

"Let's give this baby a fix," he says again before ordering to prepare the tubes of the heart-lung machine.

Yeonhee helps him to place one tube into the aorta, and another one into the right atrium of the heart. She has watched this so many times that she skillfully inserts the two smaller tubes to the heart despite her first time doing it. And all the while, Sehun is quizzing them both about the procedure.

When all the tubes are in place, Sehun orders the technician to turn-on the bypass machine. And Yeonhee watches in awe when it begins to circulate the blood as the heart cools. They wait until the temperature of the heart muscles has reached the proper level, then Sehun has her placed a clamp on the aorta to stop the blood flow. And everything has been silent for almost an hour of surgery, the only conversation they do is when Sehun asking them questions about some of the things they're doing or a consult that he gives for the ER as his pager beeps in the middle of bypassing. It's only when he's attaching the second vessel's end of the coronary artery that he stops moving.

Yeonhee gives Sehun another glance, quizzing his action with a questioning look. And he looks up to speak to Yixing,

"You want to give it a try?"

As surprising as it is, Yeonhee tries not to squeal that Sehun finally gives Yixing the chance she had been waiting for. Actually she didn't expect this will happen, moreover to the fact that they only practiced a few times last night, and it was even on a grape, like, not on a real heart! But who knows what is inside Sehun's head, Yeonhee can hardly believe it as he reaches his hands out to give Yixing the forceps with a vessel in it and needle holder.

Yeonhee, and she's certain that Yixing too, is aware of how all eyes are now looking at him. Even with the mask on, she can see that some people have their mouth agape with Sehun's dauntlessness to let an intern suturing a heart in his first surgery ever. This is a very risky offer because interns are usually only assisting the resident or attending for surgery in their first year, and one small mistake, the consequences can be fatal for patients.

She can see the gaze of objection from the other surgical team members, but no one has a say in it since they're not the surgeon. Well, except for the instrument nurse, who is the most senior member one among the people in the OR.

"Are you sure, Doctor?" she asks to make sure that Sehun is indeed serious about his offer.

"I am." Sehun answers lightly, and then he repeats his question for the second time.

"Um, I don't think..." Yixing pauses, but after a few seconds they don't hear an answer, Sehun then shrugs.

"Suit yourself, then. My offer never comes twice." And he's just about to make another small incision to start attaching the vessel, Yeonhee stops him.

"Wait." She turns her eyes to look at Yixing, and speaks on behalf of him, "Yes, he does want to try." And she immediately moves to turn around the table to stand by Yixing's side, elbows h