00 Hospital.

A suspicious looking man sat on the waiting bench, a cap pulled low over his eyes and a mask covering most of his face. However if one took the time to pull each article away, they probably would have recognized the singer Kim Jong Kook underneath.

But not a single person paid him any attention- whether they were watching the TV, or on their phones, they were all rather focused on their own thoughts.

It was unclear whether it was simply an action that betrayed the slight desolateness of modern society or one born out of consideration on his behalf, but Jong Kook was nonetheless grateful.

“Kim Jong Kook-ssi? Please come in.”

The words rippled and the scene shifted in an instant, stares all but sweeping over Jong Kook. Yet his expression remained the same- carefully neutral, though no doubt he felt a tinge of nervousness inside.

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“Tsk, look at this… I kept telling you to be careful. Did you sprain your back again?”

The loud voice of a male rang throughout the room, but it remained confined within the four walls. The owner of the voice was a white-gowned doctor in his 40s who cut a large stature despite his age. Indeed his hair did not look as bountiful as it once might have been, and he looked rather like a father scolding his young child as he chided Jong Kook. The graveness of the situation was obvious from one glance at the transparent x-ray scans laid out in front of him, the whole area around the spine and back colored black.

Jong Kook felt his insides burn and shrivel into that same color as he looked at his own fragile body, his back that looked like it was going to break apart and collapse into pieces at any moment.

The doctor sighed. “This is a pretty serious condition… Your current show puts too much of a strain on your back- at this rate you might not even be able to walk for the rest of your life. You have start thinking of your own health, I don’t know what else to tell you.”

The doctor gathered the papers on his desk and set them in an organized stack with a few light taps against the surface, the practiced action reflecting the familiarity of seeing the man in front in him. Jong Kook remained sitting in the round chair-stool, quiet and lost in thought.

The jumbled thoughts swirling in his head were sharply brought to order by the doctor’s next words-

“I think it will be difficult to avoid surgery.”

It did not mean that he was going to die, but nonetheless it was a difficult truth to face.

The words cut through his mind point-blank, in one fell swoop and to the gravity of the situation Jong Kook could only blurt out, “What did you say?”

It seemed almost cruel that the face of the man observing Jong Kook’s look of shock remained perfectly neutral. The only response Jong Kook recei