Hi guys! Thank you for following us and our nine amazing doctors for an entire year. Neither of us had expected it to be anything like this long, but it’s been an incredible journey. We’ve prepared a little interview for you down below so you can learn some of our favourite things writing this fic, as well as some bonus content like K-drama cast and OST.

Once again, thank you so much. All your love and support is amazing!

With love,

Minji & Michan xoxo

Q: Who is your EXO bias?

Minji: My EXO bias is without a shadow of a doubt Minseok! He’s held that title since MAMA, even before I was an EXO-L, and I don’t think he’ll ever lose it. I didn’t become an actual fan until Miracles in December, but Minseok just caught my attention from the beginning. The members that most often try to biaswreck me are Chanyeol, Baekhyun and Jongdae but they’re never really close to robbing Minseok of the title as bias. The gap is just too big, lol.

Michan: Kim Jongdae! I came to the EXO fandom around 2015 after watching his and Baekhyun’s legendary duo appearance on Immortal Songs. I’d enjoyed Big Bang’s more hip hop/r’n’b style for a year or so, but hadn’t gotten much further into K-pop. I was stunned to see idols sing so well with such excellent technique (both of them are truly incredible in that appearance, but Jongdae’s tone, power, expression, and vocal mixing blew me away), and it’s thanks to him that I started listening to EXO. Ever since then I’ve only loved him more and though Baekhyun and Sehun regularly try to bias-wreck me, they never QUITE succeed :3

Q: How did you come up with the story and how did co-writing work?

Minji: The original vision was mine. Years ago I sat down and assigned every EXO-member the medical field I’d think they’d fit well into - which is really how they came by their fields in this story. I found it again at one point and started thinking of how to develop it into a story. That’s when I made a character-chart of their age, their families and their dilemma. I knew I wanted it to be realistic and I knew it didn’t necessarily have to be traumatic for every character. And then … nothing happened. I was really excited about the characters, but writing never really seemed to flow until I decided to ask for a co-writer in a blogpost on AFF. Luckily for me, Michan was interested in writing with me!! We shared ideas, my initial thoughts and everything she came up with too and we were rolling~ I’m not sure exactly what I imagined this story to be when I created the characters back then, but they came alive exactly how I imagined and blossomed into everything that is Hospital 365. I owe this story to Michan, really.

Michan: It was kind of serendipitous that I read Minji’s blog post asking for a co-author, because I very rarely look at the blogs, but somehow I looked at this one and was immediately intrigued! Though I’d never co-authored before and wasn’t sure exactly how it would work, we’ve been friends online since 2015 and have met in real life twice to travel together, so I was confident we’d be able to communicate well. It was so exciting discussing everything with Minji and fleshing out the original framework of her basic ideas. I’m a total angst addict, where Minji prefers to write fluff, so we balanced really well throughout writing this. We wrote using a shared Google doc and several planning docs, and discussed ideas and writing assignments over Line. Generally we each took a character per chapter, but a few times we crossed over, working on situations we’re stronger on.

Q: What scenario in the story did you disagree on the most?

Minji: We definitely disagreed on how to go about the joint therapy session a lot. We agreed it was a very important scene to Minseok’s character development, but we feel very differently about Jangmi and it took some comments and edits to get the result we have today.

Michan: Joint therapy took much discussion indeed! I was mainly in charge of writing that chapter and I found it hard to get my head around the idea that Jangmi wouldn’t show any understanding towards Minseok’s PTSD even after she found out. The fact that she took his mental illness as him trying to make excuses was really difficult for me. I guess I’m an idealist and I wanted her to show some understanding towards him. It was also a little painful for me personally to be confronted with the fact that our actions during mental illness may never be understood or forgiven. I am happy with the finished chapter though, because I think we stayed truer to her character than how I originally wrote it, even if the idealist in me was denied a happier outcome.

Q: Whose specialty took up most research to write and which was the easiest?

Minji: For me, the specialty that took up most research was actually Yixing’s - oncology. It isn’t because cancer is a difficult disease to understand on a purely scientific level and I meet a lot of cancer patients at work, but still - it took a lot for me to write the consultations. What goes on in a consultation, how do you make it seem interesting and worthwhile without taking away all the excitement - and still keep it real? Even Chanyeol and Sehun, although non-surgical specialties as well, were easier than Yixing’s oncology.

The easiest one has to be Kyungsoo. Even though he’s also a non-surgical specialty, I work as an x-ray tech in a Radiology department at a hospital and that made his job very easy to write. A lot of the medicine I wrote for Kyungsoo was rooted in everyday life such as ED residents not quite understanding what the hell a radiologist actually does, heh.

Michan: The most research for me was Jongdae’s obstetric surgery situations, though that’s mainly because I wrote him the most, so I had to find quite a few different and interesting situations for him! Luckily I’m a medical writer by profession (I write clinical guidelines, procedures and protocols for hospitals and general practice) so I have access to detailed surgical guidelines and medical research over a multitude of specialities. The easiest would be Sehun, because there’s no surgery involved, and the guidelines are fairly straightforward for dermatological procedures such as punch biopsies.

Q: What medical case do you like best? Which emergency and which non-emergency?

Minji: My favorite emergency case is Minseok’s toxoplasmosis patient in chapter five. As a cat owner working in the medical field, I’ve always found it a little interesting. Getting to really dig deep into my research and write toxoplasmosis was a lot of fun! As for non-emergency, I still think Sooyoung is my favourite patient, although I, strangely enough, managed to develop a little sympathy for Mr. Lee at the end. He’s an interesting patient and character.

Michan: My favourite emergency is the trauma victim in chapter 3, where Joonmyuun and Zitao have to cooperate about whether to treat the brain or heart injury first, and then Joonmyun’s emergency thoracotomy with Minseok. This was based off a real case study and I think it gives some insight into the incredibly rapid and complex decisions medical staff must make in emergency situations. The aftermath, when Joonmyun has to go and talk to the victim’s parents whilst simultaneously hiding and coping with his own emotions over the traumatic situation, is something I think is not often seen from the perspective of the surgeon.

My favourite non-emergency is Baekhyun’s 8-year-old burns victim, Kang Minseo. I love the confidence she gained after her scalp graft, and how it helped Baekhyun realise that he has value and has made a huge difference to her life. I actually teared up right along with Baekhyun writing Minseo asking if she can give him a hug to say thank you :’)

Q: Which character storyline belonged most to each of you and which did you play tennis with the most?

Minji: Chanyeol’s storyline felt immediately within my comfort zone and I vibed with him and Yeonseok from the beginning. It just felt right to write that. In my opinion, we ping-ponged Joonmyun the most between us.

Michan: I’m pretty sure I wrote every single one of Jongdae’s scenes, lol. I couldn’t give up my bias~ I also wrote a lot of Baekhyun and did most of his intense mental illness stuff (as the resident angst writer extraordinaire!). I agree that we switched up Joonmyun a lot, and also Sehun probably.

Q: What aspects of the story are influenced by real life?

Minji: Dr. Mae is inspired by a resident I met at my local ED after I was in a fight with my cat and needed some penicillin and a tetanus shot. The miscommunication between nurse and doctor really inspired me and since I also worked at the same hospital I knew the resident from “behind-the-scenes” as well. Her attitude was also partly inspired by a coworker I had at the same hospital. Although the “real” Dr. Mae never stole medication from the hospital, it was really cathartic for me to fire her through Minseok.

Like I also said earlier, a lot of Kyungsoo’s medicine is based off of my own experience at the local Radiology department talking to and working with radiologists. Many of the “useless” ED residents, demanding this and that, are a very real phenomenon.

The Halloween prank Sehun and Baekhyun play on Joonmyun is also inspired by real-life pranks, done by the orderlies at my local hospital a few years back. I was, thankfully, never on the receiving end of it, haha.

Michan: The situation with Chief Heo is, sadly, based on real life. There’s a pretty appalling hidden camera video from a South Korean business in 2018, in which a senior staff member physically assaults a younger staff member by verbally abusing and repeatedly slapping them in an office full of other workers, all of whom never even look up from their computers. I wanted to bring light to the fact that such abuse does happen in some workplaces, perhaps more so in cultures with a strong social hierarchy and respect for seniors ingrained in work and social culture. If you’re curious, you can watch the video on YouTube here: 뉴스타파 - '몰카 제국의 황제’ 양진호...무차별 폭행 ‘충격과 공포', but be warned that it’s pretty shocking.

The way hospital management handled Jongdae and Jongin’s reporting of the situation is based on a real situation I went through. We used video evidence in the stor