“Today’s the beginning of the end,” Jongin greets Joo as they meet in front of the hospital doors. Today is July 1^st; the first day of the new cycle and the first day of their fifth and final year of residency.

“Took long enough,” Joo mutters, as the glass doors automatically slide open. “This year will probably be worse than intern year...” she groans.

“Whatever, I’m just excited to get rid of those disgusting red scrubs. They’re horrible.” Jongin grimaces before taking a sip of his coffee. Today his coffee had three shots of espresso added to help cope with the long day ahead.

It wasn’t always this way. The red scrubs were a courtesy of Chief Jaejoong 7 years ago. He thought that the normal pale blue color was “too boring” for surgical interns and residents, so he decided that red was a much more fitting color. His excuse was that blue was a boring color, but most like to believe that he changed it because he had a strange obsession with blood. Creepy.

“They really are,” Luhan, also a fifth year resident, adds as he catches up with the two in the lobby.

“Luhan…" Jongin starts, staring at the other's head. "Your hair’s pink,” he notes as they, and other hospital staff, wait for the chief to say his usual ‘Beginning of a New Cycle’ speech.

Luhan fiddles with the ends of his hair bashfully. “Yeah, I was tired of the blonde. I don’t know. The stylist at the salon said pink was in.”

“And you believed her? Luhan, what patient is going to take you seriously with pink hair?” Joo asks, grabbing a few of the cotton candy colored tufts in her hand.

“That one intern that dyes his hair more than he studies should enjoy it,” Jongdae voices in as he joins the three in the lobby. Jongdae’s an anesthesiologist, but he enjoys hanging around with residents because they’re easier to mess with. Go figure.

“You mean Sehun?” Luhan innocently returns as he shoves away Jongin’s hands from ruffling his hair.

“Finally calling him by his name, eh? Getting pretty serious,” Jongin teases while nudging Luhan’s gut with his elbow. Luhan tried hiding his crush on Sehun by referring to him as “that lanky intern” or “that guy”, but you can only bring up an intern so much into conversation before it becomes noticeable. Luhan was teased for the fact that he tried to hide his little crush more than the fact that he fell for an intern.

“It only took him a whole year… Jesus Christ, Luhan, are you finally gonna make your move on the kid? He’s not an intern anymore, so no more holding back,” Jongin encourages. Luhan liked to blame his hesitation on the fact that Sehun was an intern, but now that Sehun has passed his intern exams and is now a resident just like him, his “lack of balls”, as Jongdae liked to put it, is more evident than ever before.

“I don’t know. I could never approach him first. He has such a bored look on his face all the time. I don’t think I could ever hold a conversation with him without worrying that I’m boring him to death…”

“Maybe you’ll be assigned a case with him and you two will have no choice but to talk to each other,” Joo sympathizes. Luhan was never one to take initiative when it came to his relationships. He may have been outrageous with his hair color, but he’s always been rather timid when it came down to his personality.

Someone clearing their throat loudly on the staircase interrupted their conversation. A short, dark haired man was standing four steps up, desperately trying to get everyone’s attention.

“What the hell is Joonmyun doing up there?” Jongdae asks and the other three shrug their shoulders and stare in bewilderment.

“Um, everyone, if I could just get your attention…” Joonmyun timidly says amongst all the chatter of the staff.

“Guys,” a deep voice sternly says, automatically shutting everyone in the lobby up.

“Thanks, Kris,” Joonmyun thanks the tall, intimidating man and continues on. “I don’t think many of you have heard, but I am actually the new chief-” Murmurs interrupt Joonmyun again and everyone seems utterly confused by his statement. Although the news that their old chief resigned is shocking, it's nowhere near as shocking as Joonmyun being selected to replace him. “Yes, yes, Leeteuk has resigned his position of chief of surgery and after careful decision; he has chosen me to take his place.”

“Hold on,” Jongdae says aloud, everyone turning their heads to face him. “Why didn’t you tell me that you were chief?!”

Joonmyun seems flustered, but he quickly straightens his face out. “We can discuss that later, Jongdae.” The three next to Jongdae side eye him with teasing eyes and he shrinks, noticing that most of the staff is actually doing the same. “Anyways, I know most of you know me as Joonmyun, but since I am pretty much guarding the hospital now, it would be fitting if you would all refer to me as Suho.” A cheesy smile emerges from his face and the rest of the staff is quiet, waiting for him to deem his last statement a joke. He never does.  “Well, good luck everyone,” he says curtly, stepping down the stairs. The rest of the staff disperse to their ends of the hospital, gossiping loudly amongst each other, while Luhan, Jongin, and Joo linger to see Jongdae confront his boyfriend.

“Okay, I can forgive you for hiding the news, but I don’t think I can ever forgive you for ‘Suho’,” Jongdae says approaching Joonmyun.
 

Joonmyun straightens out his lab coat. “Really? I thought it was clever… I mean, Leeteuk got us all to call him Leeteuk instead of Jungsoo…”
 

“Yeah, but he didn’t have such a lame reason,” Jongin adds, not only blowing their cover, but also resulting in a glare from Jongdae.

“Don’t you guys have rounds to do?” Joonmyun threatens and after a few seconds, the three scurry off, realizing that their old attending suddenly held more power than usual.

They end up on the same elevator as their new chief resident, Kibum, and to no one’s surprise, he already has a special schedule planned out for all the fifth years. The race for chief resident was held a few weeks before and although some had better surgical skills than Kibum, nobody had quite the skill he had when it came to ordering people around. Although he could be extremely bossy and annoying, he was the only one that would get the job done.

“Your interns await you in the intern lounge,” Kibum notifies the three while staring at the clipboard in his hand. Groans echo in the elevator. Having a bunch of interns running around doing your dirty work may seem like fun, but it’s not so fun when an intern ends up almost killing a patient and you’re to blame.

After changing into their red scrubs and lab coats in the resident lounge and meeting up with fellow fifth year residents, they make their way to the interns lounge; which is actually more of a locker room than an actual lounge.  There are metal lockers and wooden beams adjacent to the lockers for seating, similar to that of a high school gym locker room.
 

Kibum pops his head in, already yelling orders at the newbies and it’s clear how much he’s enjoying his new power. They eventually all nervously file out and line up against a wall waiting to be assigned to their resident.

A wide eyed, cute, little intern catches Jongin’s eye and he’s secretly praying inside that said intern is assigned to him. Jongin’s semi ashamed of his sudden infatuation for an intern, considering such relationships are frowned upon (take a look at the Luhan/Sehun situation), but something about him is striking Jongin in all the right places.

The other residents, completely opposite of Jongin, are dreading the whole process and are just hoping that their interns at least come with a brain to match their nervous complexions.

Names are called and Jongin is more than annoyed when his desired intern, who goes by the name of Do Kyungsoo, is assigned to none other than his life time rival, Joo. Sure, the two were the best of friends, but when it came down to it, she always got the long end of the stick. In high school, she was valedictorian and he had barely missed a 4.0 GPA. They went to different schools for their B.S. (Joo going to a higher ranked school than Jongin), but both ended up at Stanford for their M.D., where of course, Joo ended up valedictorian again and Jongin fell a close second. Even during their intern year, Joo was the first to earn and successfully complete her very first solo surgery, leaving Jongin in the dust.

Jongin tries to hide the slump in his shoulders when he’s assigned with a bunch of homely looking interns, who clearly spent their entire 8 years of college and medical school studying. Their hair’s a wreck and they all could use a tan, Jongin notes. He glances over at Luhan and Joo’s interns and rolls his eyes when he notices that they’re all so much better looking than his own. He just hopes that his boring interns were smart enough to make Jongin look good (And by good he meant good as in smarts because they were already doing their job in the physical department because Jongin looked like a Greek god next to them).

After teaching the interns the ways and methods of the hospital, the interns are sent off to do their very first set of rounds, which is basic patient check up so there’s no possible way that they could mess something like that up.

Well, apparently they could mess something like that up.

Jongin was walking to the OR board to check out what surgeries were lined up that day so he could plan who’s to kiss so he could scrub in, but on the way there, he notices his favorite wide eyed intern with even wider eyes than usual (which Jongin didn’t think was possible). Kyungsoo and his fellow interns were all staring at each other, nervousness and guilt pouring out of their eyes.

Jongin smirks, finding this a perfect time to finally acquaint himself with his favorite intern.

“Is there a problem, guys?” he asks pompously, stepping into the patient’s room.

“Um, we can’t get a pulse from this patient…” one speaks and Jongin walks to the side of the bed Kyungsoo’s standing on, for obvious reasons. Jongin glances at the patient’s ECG on the monitor and rolls his eyes when he sees a clear zigzag pattern on the monitor.

“Why are you taking this patient’s pulse when he’s hooked up to a heart monitor?” Jongin asks, trying to remain patient, but it’s clear he’s annoyed. “And why are you placing a stethoscope on a patient when he is sleeping?”

“He’s not in a coma?” Kyungsoo quietly voices, and Jongin’s heart melts inside. So naive and so cute at the same time, Jongin thinks.

“No, he’s not in a coma.” Jongin flashes a smile at the shorter boy and watches the boy’s ears turn red. Fifth year’s going to be a lot more fun than Jongin had originally thought.

Woo you’ve made it to the glossary which will be at the bottom of most chapters to help you along with all of the weird medical lingo lol But if you’re curious about anything, feel free to ask or you may fare better by just googling it. I’m not a doctor OTL

Residency – After medical school, there is still more training involved before becoming an actual surgeon which is, in this case, 1 year of internship and 4 years of residency (the first year of internship being considered the 1^st year of residency).

B.S. – This just stands for Bachelor of Science, which is an undergrad degree that takes 3-5 years to achieve.

M.D. – This stands for Doctor of Medicine, which is basically a medical degree if it wasn’t already obvious.

ECG – This stands for electrocardiography. It just measures rate and regularity of heartbeats. In layman’s terms it’s really just a heart beat monitor.

Okay, I hope you enjoyed. This is a totally different fic then normal lol. No angst… at least not until Baekhyun arrives. (LMAO WHY CANT I WRITE A NORMAL FLUFFY BAEK FIC I DON’T KNOW OK.) Ok, I'm semi kidding, there really shouldn't be too much drama in this lol

Um, I’m totally in love with the field of medicine idk it’s just really intriguing to me ok. And just the thought of exo as doctors… /faints I’ll try not to shove too much of the long words and confusing medical concepts because this is mostly supposed to be more of an interaction of exo rather than actual work.

OMG AND WAIT I ACTUALLY HAVE A NAME FOR AN OC FOR ONCE HAHA

Third person is kinda hard when someone doesn’t have a name…

Well, this is really just a light hearted fic to help me cope with the angst that’s coming in the future so hopefully it’s as nice for you as it is for me :3 And I need to release otp feels here (AHEM SUCHEN OH MY GOD)