Beneath His Brightest Smile

[accuscripter]

The iron gates of the estate didn't close fast enough to drown out the sound of Do Hyun-joo's rage. His voice, stripped of all corporate refinement, roared through the courtyard, a cacophony of curses and threats that seemed to vibrate the very glass of the retreating sedan. It was the sound of a man who had lost control, a man who would rather burn the world down than let anyone else rule it.

Inside the car, the silence was worse. The grandmother didn't look back at the house she had built. She kept Ra-ik's hand crushed in hers, her knuckles white, her grip a desperate anchor. But as the car accelerated, her posture, that ancient, invincible grace, suddenly buckled.

She slumped against the leather seat, her eyes fluttering shut. Her free hand flew to her chest, clutching it as if trying to physically hold her heart in place. A sharp, wet, rhythmic panting filled the car cabin, followed by a series of dry, hacking coughs.

Se-na's internal alarm shrieked instantly.

Dyspnea. Orthopnea. That dry cough... the lungs are filling. As the grandmother's head fell heavily into Se-na's lap, a wave of sickening guilt washed over her. Just an hour ago, she had been getting "cozy" in this body. She had been distracted by the warmth of a grandmother's love, feeling safe, almost happy, in a life that wasn't hers. She had allowed herself to be absent from her own identity, floating in the domestic peace of someone else's fate.

How could I? Se-na thought, her stomach twisting with disgust. She looked at the woman's blue-tinged lips and felt like a parasite.

A needy person is a vulnerable person, and a person in need will do anything to cover their void, even if they have the best of characters. For some, it's money; for some, it's clothes or food; for others, it's power. But for Se-na, the woman who had lived a life of clinical excellence but emotional starvation, her greed was for this. She was hungry for the cedar-scented hugs and the simple warmth of being someone's "beloved."

She had been so hungry for it that she had closed her eyes to the reality of the situation. She had lowered her barriers, letting her professional conscience fall asleep while she feasted on a stranger's affection. As much as she had been scared of taking this life, she had been more tempted to just close her eyes and take it all in. She had tried to silence her mind, to hide behind the boundary of "Ra-ik," just so she wouldn't have to be vulnerable anymore.

I don't deserve this warmth, she chanted internally, her breath hitching as the car swerved through traffic. I was happy in someone else's fate while their world was burning down. I let her get this far because I wanted to believe I was just a grandson.

"HOSPITAL!" Se-na screamed at the driver, the guilt fueling a sudden, violent return to her true self.

The soft, confused teenager vanished. In his place rose the cold, clinical, and terrifyingly serious Maeng Se-na.

I am not a grandson! I am not anyone! I was a Chief Surgeon I am a chief surgeon!!! I am dealing with a failing system. A voice said in her head. Internally and externally another voice added

"Listen to me!" she barked at the driver, leaning forward with an intensity that made the man's hands shake on the wheel. "Call ahead. Tell them we have a female, late seventies, acute respiratory distress. Tell them to have a crash cart and a heart specialist standing by! Do it now, or I will make sure you never work in this city again!"

The driver didn't argue. The tires screeched as he pulled a violent U-turn. Se-na pressed her ear to the grandmother's chest, ignoring the silk of her dress. The valve is failing. This was no longer "Halmeoni," this was a patient, a critical case where she had to solve to pay back the debt of the borrowed love.

The car fishtailed into the hospital driveway. Before the valet could even open the door, Se-na was out. "Gurney! Now!" she roared at the nurses.

The car fishtailed into the hospital driveway. Before the valet could even open the door, Se-na was out. "Gurney! Now!" she roared.

A young nurse, likely a novice on her first week, stepped forward hesitatingly. She looked at Se-na a boy in a school blazer and blinked in confusion. "Wait, you need to register at the desk "

"Register?" Se-na's voice dropped into a low, dangerous vibrato. She didn't plead; she commanded. "for god's sake! She's drowning in her own fluid! Give her oxygen and get a cardiac lead down here immediately!"

"What?" the nurse said hesitantly, her hands hovering uselessly near the gurney.

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[accuscripter]

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[accuscripter]

Se-na's eyes flashed with a familiar, sharp malice. "Are you deaf as well as incompetent? Look at her lips! That is cyanosis! Look at the neck veins! You have a patient in acute congestive heart failure and you're standing there like an ornament for a hallway! Move your damn useless hands or get out of the way before you become a defendant in a malpractice suit!"

The nurse flinched as if she had been slapped. "I... I have to call the attending..."

"ATTENDING! ATTENDING! ATTENDING!!!!" she was chanting maniacally. "By the time your God damn attending finishes his tinted damn dishwater, she'll be dead!" then as of something happened to her, she got silent started to get closer, closer enough to be in the nurse's personal space. Se-na had forgotten that she was a man right now and what her closeness could mean to a woman.

For the nurse, the presence of a man double her size and height getting closer to her face was so overwhelming that she actually tripped backward. "Is this how they train you now? To stare while lungs fill with blood? Get the Lasix, get the O2, and get me a crash cart! If I see you hesitate one more time, I will make sure you never even work as a school nurse in this city! DO YOUR JOB!"

The nurses looked at her with stunned confusion, a boy in a school blazer screaming like a veteran doctor. She was shivering now but then a senior nurse came, she was heavy and sturdy. She pushed ra-ik (se-na) away, "Kid, step back! We have protocols."

"To hell with your protocols!" Se-na snapped back as she stabilized herself. "If you wait, she dies! Do you see the color of her lips? That's cyanosis! If you don't start the diuretic now, her heart will stop!"

"Security!" senior nurse yelled. Two large men grabbed Se-na by the shoulders, dragging her away as the gurney disappeared behind the double doors, snapping back se-na to her fickle reality that she really was just a kid right now. She fell on the bench outside. The silence that followed was deafening. She looked down at her hands, those long, teenage fingers that should have been holding a surgical tool, not trembling in a wrinkled school uniform, praying outside the closed doors.

Finally, a nurse stepped out, looking bored. Se-na rushed her. "The patient from the Do estate. Status? Did you start the medicine? Is the attending here?"

The nurse didn't even look up from her clipboard. "You're the grandson, right? Look, kid, it's not that serious. Just a minor flare-up. Old people get tired. She's fine. We're just going to monitor her."

The word fine hit Se-na like a physical blow. In the medical world, "fine" was a lie told to children to keep them from asking questions.

"Minor?" Se-na's voice dropped. "She was gasping for air. If you treat this as 'minor,' she will be dead by morning. You're missing the mechanical failure of the heart!"

The nurse finally looked up, her eyes full of pity. "I don't know where you're picking up those big words, maybe from a TV show, but you need to go sit down. This is not a drama and you" she looked the boy from bottom to top, "you are certainly not a doctor. You're just a boy who's scared. Go get some water and wait for your father. We've already called Mr. Do."

"My father?" The blood drained from Se-na's face. The man who had just vowed to destroy them was coming. The "responsible adult" who would have the power to stop her from saving the only person who cared about her.

"I'm not just a boy..." Se-na whispered, her voice breaking. She reached for the nurse's arm, a desperate plea in her eyes. "Please. Just check her heart again. Just look at the T-waves... please..."

But the nurse was gone. A security guard stepped into her path. "Back off, son," he said, talking to her like she was a confused toddler.

Se-na slumped into a chair. Her mind was screaming a hundred life-saving procedures, but her hands were empty. For the first time in her life, she had the knowledge of a god and the power of a ghost. She was trapped in the wrong skin, a brilliant mind locked inside a powerless child's frame.

I'm sorry, ahjumma, she thought, a single, hot tear tracking down Ra-ik's cheek. I know what's killing you, and nobody will listen to me because I'm wearing the wrong skin.

She sat there for hours, the hospital lights humming above her. The exhaustion of the day, the guilt of her "greed," and the terror of her father's arrival finally took their toll. She didn't even know these tears were hers or his. Maybe they were a mix the best of none or worst of both.

She didn't know when her eyes closed, but she fell into a heavy, dreamless sleep on the hard bench outside the ward. A tears falling from her eyes even in sleep, staining the fabric of Ra-ik's school jacket.

"WHERE AM I!"

Se-na suddenly woke up with a gasp, her heart hammering against her ribs. But she wasn't on the bench. She wasn't in the hospital hallway.

It was dark and airy around her. The air was cold, smelling of rain and distant city smog. She was standing on a high terrace, the wind whipping through her thin clothes. She felt a sharp, stinging pain in her feet. She looked down.

Do Ra-ik was standing on shattered glass, his bare feet bleeding into the shards.

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[accuscripter]

The transition was like being plunged into ice water. One moment, Se-na was drowning in the hum of hospital lights as a powerless teenager; the next, the world around her started getting vast, dark, and screaming with wind.

The air tasted of rain and the heavy, metallic tang of city smog. She wasn't in a hallway anymore. She was standing on a high terrace, the edge of the world dropping off into a sea of twinkling city lights that looked like cold, distant diamonds. Her thin clothes offered no protection against the gale, but the cold wasn't what made her gasp.

It was the stinging, rhythmic pulse of pain in her feet.

"AHJUMMA!!!" She broke out with a gasp. But there was no one.

Se-na looked down. She or rather, the body she inhabited was standing in the center of a graveyard of broken glass. The shards glittered like malevolent stars in the dark. With every shift of her weight, the glass bit deeper, the warm, wet sensation of blood blooming between her toes and staining the concrete. She looked at her hands. These weren't the trembling fingers of a teenager. They were larger, scarred, the hands of a thirty-five-year-old man who had lived a life of heavy, silent labor.

In her his hand, she clutched a pile of crumpled papers. As her eyes landed on the bold, typed letters, the world seemed to tilt.

I was right! the words screamed from the page. You are not my son! You are not even the son of the woman you call mom! Be ready to pay for the damages!

The word "damages" felt like a scalpel to the throat. To Do Hyun-joo, Ra-ik wasn't a human being; he wasn't a boy who needed a father or a man who deserved a name. He was a faulty product. A breach of contract. A bill that had come due.

Suddenly, the soul inside this body the real Ra-ik surged forward. Se-na felt it like a wave of black ink pouring into her mind. It was an absolute, hollow despair. It was the feeling of wanting to let go, to let the wind take him over the edge of the terrace and drown in the dark. He wasn't a bastard; he was a mistake. A ghost in a house that didn't want him.

Ding.

The doorbell rang, cutting through the wind. Before Se-na could decide what to do, Ra-ik's body began to move. It wasn't her will; it was his muscle memory, a puppet moved by strings of habitual obedience. He limped across the shards, leaving a trail of red blooms on the floor, and opened the door.

Standing there was the woman she had seen watering plants with such practiced grace as if she had no worries in the world. Do Hyun-joo's wife. No idea if her façade was beautiful or if she really had no worries in the world.

"Omm-oni..." se-na blurted out unintentionally, it was ra-ika's conscious at play ... his voice was a broken, deep rasp.

THRASH.

The slap was majestic. It was the movement of a woman who had practiced her dignity for decades, landing with a force that sent the man, a man double her size stumbling back.

She didn't stop. She stepped into the house, her face a mask of primal, distorted fury. She slapped him again, and then again, her rings catching the skin of his cheek.

"Because of an infestation like you, I suffered all my life!" she wailed, her voice cracking the heavy silence of the penthouse. "All my life, I went along with the tag of a 'bad woman'! I let people whisper about my loyalty just so my child and I could keep living! I knew I wasn't disloyal, but I never proved it because I didn't have to; I just had to keep quiet for my child! I just had to sacrifice myself and my honor for my child. As long as I stayed quiet, no one would harm me and my child."

She grabbed Ra-ik by the collar, shaking the grown man as if he were a rag doll. Ra-ik didn't fight back. He let his limbs go loose, his head lolling back as he accepted the blows as if they were his birthright.

"But to see you are not even my son!" she shrieked, her eyes wild with a terrifying, primal grief. "For a pest like YOU I had to sacrifice my life silently?! Tell me, where is my son?! Where is my baby?! What did you do with him?! Tell me! TELL MEEE!"

Se-na's mind suddenly snapped, taking over the dejected man. After all, she, the "guest," had seen enough. As a surgeon who had spent a lifetime fighting for lives, no matter how "damaged" or "mistaken" they were, she had to surge to the front.

With a strength that shocked the older woman, Se-na grabbed her wrists and shoved her back.

"Your child?" Se-na barked, pushing her further away. "Sacrifice? You seem terribly mistaken about your role here, if you even had one!"

She moved closer, her towering frame casting a dark, suffocating shadow over the trembling woman. "You were quiet because that was the only way to preserve your status as an elite lady. It was the only way for you to keep your VIP subscriptions, your high-society galas, and your unlimited black cards."

"YOU!!!" his mother snapped, her face contorting with sheer shock.

I work hard to keep this story going for everyone. If you find it interesting, kindly consider supporting this work with a cup of coffee. Every contribution helps me improve and grow
patreon.com/accuscripter