“It’s called rehabilitation, not a miracle, Seunghoon,” Dr Jinwoo says patiently, kindly smiling at the lying man. He is looking at him with a stern face, not convinced.

It has only been 4 days since his surgery and he has been asking for discharge since the first minute the anaesthesia wore out of his system and he opened his glassy eyes on this same hospital room.

“But Dr Song told me that all went alright, that he fixed my lower back problem. He promised me I would be able to walk and dance again without help soon,” he complains for the nth time this morning. Dr Jinwoo has been doing his daily rounds and stopped by Seunghoon’s room to check on him. What usually would take him less than five seconds, with Seunghoon pouting and fussing five minutes has already gone and he still needs to write down his report about his recovery.
For some reason, he thought that ripping his back open to mending his nervous system was easy, that he would wake up and walk as if they were Gods instead of doctors - as much as some particular doctor liked to disagree over that particular matter. Someone named Song Minho, who is always promising speedy recovery after any complicated intervention, totally forgetting to tell his patients about the hours of rehab waiting for them after the surgery, about the pain getting back to normality would bring to them even once they were cured.

“The surgery went perfectly, but that’s only the first stage. Now you need to do the exercises to gain straight. You won’t be able to walk otherwise. Not to mention dancing. Impossible with your current condition Seunghoon,” he explains, holding the file with his records, trying to fill them up while talking. He has been telling him the same every hour. He looks at him smiling beatifically, encouraging him to get up from the bed and come with him to the rehab clinic so he can proceed with the serial of different movements to reinforce his aching muscles after a year in a wheel-chair.

His medical history is the following: at age 24 he had fallen on the stage while dancing. Doctors said he wouldn’t be able to walk again, his spinal column too damaged to function. For a year he has been prostrated on a wheeling-chair until meeting neurosurgeon Dr Song Minho during a check-up: a renamed specialist working on an experimental surgery to help improve mobility of those like Seunghoon, broken and wreck, with several damaged nerves.

He was patient number 4th of his clinical trial. The previous three before him were discharged with an improvement of 94% of their conditions, able to move their atrophied muscles and junctions without pain with only a little bit of sloppiness as a reminder.

This, of course, after months of rehabilitation under physiotherapist and traumatologist Dr Kim Jinwoo, the hands and work after Minho’s success, the one who helped muscles to gain straight again, the one providing routines to re-learn how to move, how to walk, how to stay still back on their two feet. It was hard work and diligence, not some sort of magic as Minho liked to say. Magic to remove tissue attached to the spine, blood clots blocking veins and arteries. As if reverting paralysis were just a few movements of a wand. As if the operation room, the nurses and all the medical equipment meant nothing to him; the showman Minho who can cure anything.

For instance, Jinwoo loathes Minho. Minho who thinks he is the almighty Song, Minho and his successful surgeries he is so full of. Arrogant, proud and loud, no-one in YG’s Hospital isn’t aware of his greatness, of his talent, of his mightiness. All should bow down to him, king of neurosurgery, the pride of the Surgery Chief.

Jinwoo would be able to deal with him if only he didn’t so openly downgrade his work, always acting as if his field wasn’t relevant or important - as if he wasn’t the one making his surgeries complete, as if inserting a printed bone on a fractured arm wasn’t a thing he did so many times before, as if holding Seunghoon’s hands and cheer him whenever he was able to take a little step by himself, without help, was something he could do on his sleep. As if he should be thankful to be part of his project, receiving the trash that Minho left behind after coming from the surgery room - the aftermaths of rehab.

Jinwoo sighs, tired, leaving Seunghoon to his girlfriend in hopes that, perhaps, love will change his obstinate, pig-headed self. He has better things to do than trying to convince someone stubborn about the magic and miracles of Song Minho. Diane smiles at him knowingly, like a promise of a change of mind.
He is just a step away from Seunghoon’s room when his beeper starts to ring: an emergency.
The ER is busy, there are doctors all around but Jinwoo’s chief, Dr Seungyoon is assigning him the patients: a car crash.

Jinwoo examines them. Carefully, X-ray and a TAC to evaluate their needs. By the time Song Minho arrives to check on them, Jinwoo has managed to stabilise them all, avoiding a thoracic haemorrhage, consolidated a leg and repaired a hand smashed after the accident. He is diligent, fast and professional meanwhile Dr Minho is just a facade, a well-known name and shareholder for the Hospital with talent only for programed surgeries he has the time to study beforehand.

Strangely, Minho has chosen him as a partner for his clinic essay, as his second in command kind of, the one behind the scenes doing what Minho can't: mending the problem after the solution itself. Though Jinwoo has never worked with him. They had a meeting and, regularly, Minho sends him the patients records and tests via mail. They don't talk or interact. Or even seen. Not like today in the ER. Minho is all over Jinwoo's patient, examining his dilated pupils in search of brain damage as Jinwoo is cleaning an injury - a bone is shown, ripping the skin of her arm and he needs to act soon before it will be gangrened, he needs to put the bone back in place and fix it with metal so she can use it again.

Minho wants to perform a surgery, too.

"I need to draw the blood of her brain before it can cause a thrombus," he says to no-one in particular. Jinwoo understands. But he also understands the urgency of his action.

"She needs to get the bone back. Otherwise, the gangrene can pollute the blood. If her blood gets infected it won't be of any use to save her brain. She will die due to it".

By the way that Minho frowns, he wants to disagree. And so he does, pushing his position to get away with the surgery without considering the effects of it. Jinwoo hates him - but as much as he dislikes Minho, he can't ignore the fact that the other injury is urgent to heal, too. And if that means he will have to work with Minho, he will. If that means to gulp down his pride to save a life, so he will do. He knows his priorities.

"We can do it together. We are just wasting time and she doesn't have many," he says wisely.

Minho wants to refuse but one look at the girl on the stretcher tells him that Jinwoo has a valid point.

It's not easy to work together. Minho's surgery is important but not complicated and more often than not, Jinwoo feels observed. Judged. Minho looks at him and flusters then gets back to the patient's opened brain. Jinwoo is focused on cleaning the bone, taking away the remaining pieces of it. The skin around all torn, is soft and swollen, coloured in shadows of blue and grey and rotten, completely infected. He slowly cauterization it, cutting bits of flesh, sewing up the remaining parts together.

Minho is suctioning blood out of the grey cells with an eye on Jinwoo as if making sure that he is doing his job alright - as if JInwoo needed supervision as if he couldn’t do it alone. Jinwoo tries to ignore him and focuses on the injuries he has to heal, preventing it from spreading. He has administered IV antibiotics that are still connected to the body.

Jinwoo glances at Minho just to caught him staring. He has already closed the head and is now whimsically looking at him with a glint of sparks inside his eyes. Being caught red-handed, he mumbled something that sounds like he has finished his intervention. But instead of leaving the operation room, he is roaming lazily here, observing Jinwoo’s hands working. It is annoying, it makes him feel uneasy.

Jinwoo wonders then, an oscillating saw on his hand, ready to cut a part of the bone that needs to go because it’s too long to fit inside the remaining flesh - he had to scratch up the decayed parts on the elbow that later on a plastic surgeon will have to stretch to cover up the exposed bones once he is done. With his glance fixed on the patient, he doesn’t notice Minho getting closer, observing fascinated how the saw is breaking the bone, how Jinwoo’s hands put pressure into it, calibrating the angle, cutting and grinding down the bones. He seems to analyze his work, examining it carefully, detailedly, captivated. But when Jinwoo is done, he says nothing. He stays still by Jinwoo, stern expression and Jinwoo has had enough. Why is Minho still there when he didn’t want to work with him at first? Jinwoo recalls having to convince Minho to get the surgery together - which was on the benefit of the girl. Minho didn’t want to share the operation room and, yet, he seems reluctant to go. He is also reluctant to give an unwanted opinion about Jinwoo’s surgery so, what is he doing here?

“Dr Minho, I don’t want to be rude but, why are you still here if you are already done with your surgery?” he asks, getting rid of the plastic gloves and the paper mask, washing the blood out of his hands.

“I -- wanted to see you working”, he stutters, his reddish hair a mess after removing his hat. With the green grown his tanned skin glows and his eyes are looking at his lips, his piercing is been biting nervously.

This is strange. Jinwoo has been under Minho’s service and he has never shown any interest in him - he has purposely avoided him, sending him emails about patients instead of talking to him, he has used Seungyoon, Jinwoo’s superior, head of Trauma, to pass messages and tasks and requirements.
Jinwoo tries to let it slip, to don’t dip into it, to reel an argument with him because it isn't worth the pain. But Minho is looking at him, expectant and Jinwoo doesn’t know what is he waiting for - if he has done something wrong.

“Is it everything alright, Dr.?” he asks, raising an eyebrow. Minho nods but doesn’t move an inch from his spot. Up close, he looks traumatized, all the blood is drawn out of his system. Maybe he is sick after all, perhaps the heat after the operation has gotten into him. Jinwoo puts his hand on his forehead and Minho flinches as if it hurt. It hurts Jinwoo’s pride. Is not as if he is going to smack him for being an annoyance. “You don’t look good,” he murmurs, turning away, out of his reach, out of his sight.

“It’s you. You make me weak,” it’s what it comes from Minho as an answer - an answer that solves nothing at all. Jinwoo looks at him with a query inside his orbs.

“How can I make you weak when you don’t even notice me?” he wonders, surprised. Minho’s cheeks are all rosé. “Besides you are neuro God, you aren’t weak at all,'' he adds because it’s the truth. Minho has never turned off surgery, he has the highest saving ratio not only of the hospital but from the whole country. He has saved so many terminally ill patients with innovative techniques and talents and effort. Jinwoo might don’t like him personally but he won’t deny his success, his high profile, all the lives he has changed.

'I am constantly scared, Kim Jinwoo, but I can't allow my patients to know. They need to trust me. I need to trust myself. There is so much that can go wrong during a surgery... That's why I play it cool, that's why I call myself neurosurgeon God. So, you see, out of work I'm a scaredy-cat' he says with a soft smile.

So it’s all a facade. A facade that works out perfectly well. Jinwoo looks at him with new eyes. Mayhap Minho isn’t the cool, indifferent guy but someone too sensible, someone who would cry after losing a patient, someone who can’t afford to be weak due to his responsibilities and, therefore, he acts as if he doesn’t care just to perform well at work.

'Are you scared now?' Jinwoo asks to what Minho nods in agreement.

'I'm face to face with the most gorgeous person in the world' he explains, 'of course, I'm afraid. Of what you would think about me''.

'My opinion of you is so different now...', Jinwoo replies looking straight into his eyes. In front of him, there is not Dr Minho, chief of neurosurgery, God of the operation room but Song Minho, just a boy, a very cute one, who is worried about what he might think of him Jinwoo holds his hand. 'You don't need to be scared', in Minho's eyes fireflies starts to light them up. He is smiling at the floor, his hand warm, fingers unsure, tangling softly around his hand. 'I'll be with you'. Because Jinwoo knows what it means to be scared. Jinwoo has been there before - he has battled his fears and won over them with hard work and perseverance. Minho, who hadn’t dared to ask him to work on his renamed project, Minho, who always is observing him from afar because he thinks he is beautiful and perfect and kind and talented and an incredible human being, Minho who is scared of everything and yet faces every day as if a hero. Song Minho who fancies Jinwoo so much, that has been involving him just to have an excuse to see him, to mutter the courage to talk to him and has only messed up all. Maybe he will give him a chance. Maybe he has worked so hard and deserves a reward - something more than medical awards and praises and being called the neurosurgeon God. Maybe he will hold his hand longer, walk with him to the car and kiss him good-bye. Maybe he will do this and more if only Minho does one little thing on his favour.

It’s only been a week after his last session but Lee Seunghoon is already walking on his own, a hand on Jinwoo and the other holding Diane’s. At the end of the hall, Dr Minho is smiling at how great his patient is doing, how serious he is taking rehab now. And when Jinwoo turns his eyes to glance at him, he smirks at him knowingly.

Maybe he deserves another kiss - if Seunghoon manages to walk back to his room without a pout on his lips.