Chapter 233

Episode 233 A Heart So Clearly Visible (2)

"…Uh?"

What was this?

What was really going on?

A cold spring breeze blew past, chilling my ears. However, what resonated far louder was the thumping sound of my own heart echoing inside my head.

For a moment, it felt as though all the surrounding noise had vanished. My heart started racing.

Well, it made sense. We were people who rolled around together on the blood-splattered Emergency Room floor every day, exchanging orders whenever a patient's vitals wavered. Our daily routine during residency consisted of staying up all night and laughing at each other's disheveled hair and exhausted faces.

However, since last summer, our relationship had become something ambiguous—something that felt like a situationship, but maybe wasn't. Either way, it had turned strange.

The dispatch to Geoje Island last year, the strange rumors, the news interview, and those subtle exchanges of gazes at the cafe during the winter. Even so, over the past few months, we had both been too overwhelmed enduring the insane ER workload to think about it. I thought the feeling had naturally faded while we were busy dealing with the influx of critical patients. I truly believed we had just bonded through camaraderie and returned to being ordinary seniors and juniors.

But was that not the case?

While tens of thousands of thoughts were storming through my head, Baek Eunseo raised her deeply bowed head.

"Dr. Han, I… No, Senior. Ah, seriously, what is wrong with me?"

She hurriedly wiped her face with both hands, adjusting how she addressed me. Despite the darkness, her face was visibly flushed red. A slight tremor shook her shoulders, though I couldn't tell if it was from the cold or something else. Her usually deft fingertips twitched, lost and searching for a place to rest.

I just watched her quietly. I didn't rush her, nor did I throw out a joke to deliberately avoid the situation. My gaze was fixed solely on this one person before my eyes, Baek Eunseo.

She took a deep breath, and as if she had finally made up her mind, she clenched both fists tightly and looked straight into my eyes.

"Ah, Senior, I'm serious. I'm really, truly going to tell you right now."

Seeing her determined gaze, looking as if she were about to step into an operating room, the tension that had unconsciously stiffened me relaxed a bit.

"Yes, go ahead and tell me."

My voice came out much calmer than expected. I offered a faint smile, trying to make it easier for her to speak.

However, Baek Eunseo still couldn't open her mouth easily. Her lips parted and closed several times. She swallowed hard once more.

"Senior, I mean, um, I'm really going to tell you."

"Yes."

Watching her repeat the same words like a broken robot was so entirely different from her usual, sharp self as a 3rd-year resident that it stirred a strange emotion in me.

"Can I tell you now?"

"Yes, tell me."

Despite my answer, she hesitated again, staring down at her toes.

"I'm really telling you, okay?"

Seeing her stall repeatedly, a soft chuckle finally escaped my lips.

"When exactly are you going to tell me?"

At my words, she burst into a laugh, breaking her frozen posture. Only then did the tight tension loosen just a fraction, and a faint glimpse of the original Baek Eunseo's expression returned.

"Ugh, no, I was really trying to do it just now!"

She groaned, glaring at me reproachfully. It even looked like a hint of moisture had gathered around the corners of her eyes.

I pulled my hands out of my pockets and leaned down slightly to match her gaze. Then, I quietly waited for her next words once more.

"Yes. Tell me."

At my words, Baek Eunseo squeezed her eyes shut and opened them. The wind stopped. Her reddened lips finally opened.

"I think I like you, Senior."

'Ah, shit.'

Something heavy dropped right in the middle of my chest. My heart began to pump frantically. My pulse felt like it was beating at least 120 times a minute.

'Is this arrhythmia?'

My brain, trained as a 4th-year Emergency Medicine resident, instinctively tried to pinpoint the pathophysiology, but… the cause of this symptom was definitely not a heart disease. It was Baek Eunseo, standing right in front of my eyes.

I hurriedly raised a hand to slightly cover my mouth. My lip muscles were twitching willfully, slipping out of my control. Right now, the corners of my mouth felt like they were going to curl up way too much.

"You like me?"

My voice sounded so unfamiliar that I could hardly believe it myself. At those words, Baek Eunseo replied with her head deeply bowed.

"Yes. I mean… I think I like you."

"So it's a confession."

At my straightforward confirmation, Baek Eunseo's shoulders flinched. She maintained her signature bright, intelligent gaze, but her mouth seemed to have a mind of its own. She began to ramble in the exact briefing tone she used when flustered.

"Th-that's right? I became aware that I like you, Senior, and considering that you will be graduating from residency next year, I judged there isn't much time left. Therefore, by revealing this, I intend to achieve my objective and—"

Are you presenting a patient case or what?

Unable to hold back the laughter leaking out behind the hand covering my mouth, my shoulders shook.

"Yes. You don't have to be so verbose, so calm down for now."

"Ah! Yes!!"

As if finally realizing what she had just said, Baek Eunseo covered her face with both hands and let out a small scream.

Wanting to cool down her flushed cheeks, she quietly lifted her head and looked up at the night sky. The streetlamp light softly settled over her face.

"Since when?"

When I asked, she flinched while looking at the sky and turned back to me.

"Pardon, Senior?"

"Since when did you like me?"

Human psychology is truly a fickle thing. Once the dam broke, I became intensely curious about every single detail—exactly when and how I had entered her heart.

"Uh… I don't know."

"You don't know?"

"No, it's just…"

Baek Eunseo shoved both hands deep into her coat pockets and carefully began to recall the past.

"When I first saw you and applied for EM, it was just because you looked cool. You know, that kind of coolness as a professional—making decisions without hesitation in a blood-splattered environment and saving patients. It was just a form of admiration."

"Yes."

"But do you remember last year, Dr. Han?"

"What?"

"When you were walking home with me after work, you received a call from your friend and ran straight back into the hospital to help."

That was true. Last year in the summer. On our way home, dragging bodies that had been thoroughly battered by the ER workload, Son Jongwoon—who was the Chief Resident of Pediatrics at the time—had unofficially called for help regarding an inpatient.

The memory of that day when we diagnosed DADA2. I had rushed back to the hospital without even having the room to look after Baek Eunseo, who was beside me.

"Yes, I remember."

"When I watched your back as you ran away down the street, I felt a sudden certainty."

"What kind of certainty?"

When I asked quietly, Baek Eunseo looked down and tapped the floor with the tip of her shoe as she answered.

"Ah, I just like this person."

"……."

"Because the back of you running away looked so reliable, yet so foolish, and so cool. It crossed the line of professional respect, and I realized I had come to like the person named Han Hyeonjae himself. Since then, I've been certain, and I've liked you all along. Truly."

A confession delivered like a straight fastball. I swallowed hard and asked again.

"Then what was the reason you felt you absolutely had to do it right now?"

Baek Eunseo raised her head and looked straight into my eyes.

"Senior, you're a 4th-year now, right?"

"Yes."

"Even if we assume you'll stay at Cheongjin University after graduation, we never know. If professors from other places call, you might go somewhere better. You never know how things will turn out in life. So, I wanted to confess before your residency ends… before you disappear from before my eyes. I was constantly calculating the timing, but…"

She took a small breath.

"But today, just, the atmosphere… walking side by side with you on such a quiet street, I felt like I would regret it for the rest of my life if I didn't say it now. It just felt like I absolutely had to do it right now."

"Sigh…."

I let out a long breath and looked up at the sky once.

"Now it's my turn to give you an answer, right?"

At my words, Baek Eunseo swallowed hard, her face taut with extreme tension.

"Yes, Senior."

Watching her squeeze her eyes shut like a prisoner awaiting execution, I internally posed a question to myself.

'Can I say that I like Baek Eunseo?'

Even while being covered in blood and filth every day in the hellfire of the emergency room, I felt strangely at ease whenever she was the one standing next to me. A reliable partner who perfectly understood and prepared the medications even if I threw out rough, hasty orders.

But did I like her just because she was a smart, competent junior?

No.

My heart had thumped when I saw her show up in casual clothes, and whenever we walked side by side like this on the commute home, I found myself wishing this path were just a little bit longer.

'After all, every time this happens, my heart races, and I like being together.'

Moving beyond camaraderie, she was someone whose casual appearance I wanted to see outside of work, someone whose exhausted, fatigue-ridden face still looked pretty to me.

'If that is what liking someone means, then I suppose I do.'

My intuition, trained through hundreds, thousands, and tens of thousands of differential diagnoses, was pointing to the diagnostic name of this emotion with absolute clarity. Someone I genuinely felt comfortable and happy with, not just because her face was pretty. The only person to whom I could safely entrust my back.

I slowly pulled both hands out of my pockets. Then, holding the shoulders of the completely frozen Baek Eunseo so she couldn't run away, I looked straight into her eyes and spoke.

"I think I like you too."

"……Uh?"

Baek Eunseo's eyes widened insanely large. Seeing her mouth hanging open blankly as if her brain had short-circuited from the unexpected positive response made me so happy that I couldn't help but let out a short chuckle.

I quietly opened my arms.

"Uh, uh-uh… Senior?"

I gently pulled the flustered, frozen Baek Eunseo into my embrace.

Rustle—

Over her thick winter coat, her small body, stiff with tension, slipped perfectly into my arms. Her two arms, which had been wandering in the void at first, soon cautiously wrapped around my waist as well.

A quiet three-way intersection where footsteps had ceased. Under the bright light of a streetlamp, a man and a woman quietly held each other.