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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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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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.

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"Mother? What Mother? You are not my mother! You never were even when we were joined by this title of mother and son!" Se-na hissed, her voice dropping. "I don't remember even once when you protected Do Ra-ik as a so called Mother. And now that its clear that you are not my mother then ..." se-na stopped mid sentence and took a deep breath, it was as if ra-ik-a was keeping her from saying hurtful things to this woman. But Se-na was also adamanst about saying it out loud, she rubbed her eyes rather forcefully and then continued, "And if you aren't my mother, then you have even less right to stand in front of me, let alone touch me. You are a stranger in my home."

The woman gasped, her chest heaving as she stared at the "son" who had suddenly found a spine of steel.

"And about loyalty? Don't make me laugh!" Se-na continued, her eyes flashing with a sharp, Maeng Se-na malice. "You, a lonely woman, in the penthouse apartment of a man who lives alone? What will people say when they hear the 'loyal' wife is breaking into bachelors' suites at midnight to beat a man? Think of the headlines."

She took a step forward, her massive shadow now completely swallowing the woman. "They will not believe that you are here for your son, or for beating a man you called your son for years. The news that I am not your son might have already been released by Do Hyun-joo, and people... humans are dangerous beings, Mother. They will only see what they want to see, and interpret what they want to interpret. All they will see is a grown man who is not your son and a lone woman who is not my mother anymore in the dark. They will forget I was ever your son or you ever my mother. So, do you really think the world will believe you?"

Se-na reached out, her fingers steady despite the thrumming in her chest. She tucked a loose strand of the woman's hair behind her ear trying to give off a gesture of intimate, terrifying dominance of a man.

"Who will they believe?" Se-na whispered, leaning into the woman's personal space. "The so-called 'tainted woman' of the Do house? Or the man who made a name for himself, the man people love and call the 'Nation's Healer', the one who was shunned by his own family? Me not being your son? That has already been a rumor for a long time you see... so people will not say oh my god they will say why did you never speak of getting a test done? Why did you keep a stranger in your home for all these years? why did you stay quiet? what did you want to hide? who did you want to hide? then mother what do you think Who holds the scale now?"

"Do you think only I will go down alone?!" she shrieked back, her face contorting with a terrifying madness as her saliva sprayed across Ra-ik's face. "I will take you with me!"

Se-na wiped the wetness from his face with the back of her hand. For the first time tonight, she didn't just feel cold irritation, but felt a raw hot fury.

"Ugh, woman!" Se-na cried with deep disgust, her voice cutting through the woman's hysteria. "Keep your spitting to yourself! You, with your filthy statements and demonic actions, cannot afford to leave even a single scratch on this face. This is a face adored by millions! People will chew you up and spit you out of this society like a chewed, dry bone."

"YOU!" The woman raised her hand again, but her fingers were trembling.

Se-na caught her wrist mid-air and held it with absolute strength without causing pain.

"Ok now I am bored of tis game," Se-na whispered, her face completely empty of emotion as she let out a deep sigh. "I have always been tired of this drama. It's good that it's ended."

She let go of the woman's wrist, letting it drop like a piece of dead weight.

"So goodbye. Go play this little game of yours with your husband. Don't waste your time here on an unrelated man. Don't raise mine or your blood pressure okay! now go."

"SECURITY!" Se-na didn't wait. She smashed her palm against the emergency bell mounted next to the door.

Within seconds, the heavy thud of boots echoed in the hallway. Two guards appeared, and Se-na pointed a trembling, bloody finger at the woman. "Get this intruder out of here. Now."

The guards didn't hesitate. They took the wailing, screaming woman by the arms and dragged her toward the elevator. Her cries of "Where is my baby?" echoed down the shaft until the doors hissed shut.

The silence returned, but the body didn't recover. Ra-ik's legs gave out, and Se-na collapsed onto the floor, her hands pressing into the glass shards.

What is happening to me?! she screamed internally.

Her heart was beating in a frantic, painful rhythm fueled by a cocktail of adrenaline and a depression that wasn't hers. She tried to draw a breath, but it came out as a ragged, sobbing pant. Tears hot, thick, and heavy poured down her face.

She could feel it clearly now. This wasn't her grief. This wasn't her trauma. These painful emotions of hate, disgust, and absolute, soul-crushing sadness were being projected into her from the very marrow of these borrowed bones. She was an intruder in a house that was currently being demolished.

She clutched at her chest, trying to distinguish between her own identity and the man's agony, but the lines were blurring. In the dark of the penthouse, with her feet bleeding into the glass, Maeng Se-na realized that the "cozy" life was gone. She was trapped in a war she didn't understand, wearing the skin of a man who had already surrendered maybe.

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[accuscripter]

The silence that settled over the penthouse after the elevator doors closed was far worse than the screaming.

Se-na clutched at her chest, her fingers digging through Ra-ik's shirt, trying desperately to distinguish between her own identity and the man's agonizing despair. But the boundaries were dissolving like sugar in hot water. In the dark of the penthouse, with her bare feet bleeding into the graveyard of broken glass, Maeng Se-na realized with a sickening clarity that the "cozy" life was completely gone. She was trapped in a war she didn't understand, wearing the skin of a man who had already surrendered.

Because right now, Do Ra-ik's body was moving on its own.

It wasn't Se-na commanding his legs. It was Ra-ik's residual consciousness a hollow, dark current pulling his physical frame toward the terrace. He limped past the ruined furniture, leaving a bloody trail across the tile, and pushed open the heavy glass doors into the midnight gale.

The wind hit them like a wall. The air tasted of cold rain, ozone, and distant city smog. A hundred stories below, the city lights flickered like cold, uncaring diamonds.

His death wish paid her no mind, nor did the surrounding world offer any mercy. Perhaps that was the true, silent trap of penthouses. You buy your way into one to escape the crowds, to elevate yourself so no one can ever look down on you again only to realize that when you finally break, when you scream and wail into the freezing night, the very distance you built keeps everyone too far away to care. No one is coming to stop you. The architecture leaves you alone to rot and die in your own golden solitude.

Ra-ik reached out with trembling, blood-stained hands and grabbed the wet iron grill of the terrace railing.

"No... no, no, no!" The words forced their way past his locked teeth, a choked, ragged rasp that was instantly torn away by the gale. Se-na wasn't just screaming inside the vault of his mind she was frantically fighting his physical muscles, forcing his voice box to vibrate with her own desperate panic.

Ra-ik lifted his heavy leg, swinging it over the top rail.

"DO RA-IK!" she wailed out loud, her voice tearing raw through his dry throat, mixing with the roar of the night sky. "PLEASE, RA-IK-A, DON'T! I know what you're going to do! You won't survive this, man! Please don't! I didn't even know I was scared of heights, but right now I am terrified! DO-RAIK! I KNOW YOU CAN HEAR ME! YOU CAN HEAR ME! STOP IGNORING ME! I KNOW THIS IS YOU!"

She screamed through his vocal cords until his throat burned and her internal voice cracked, but the momentum of his death wish drove him forward regardless. Ra-ik climbed over the iron bar, his bare, bloody feet coming to rest on a narrow concrete ledge no wider than a palm. He was hanging over the open sky, holding onto the iron bars behind his back.

As they hovered over the hundred-story drop, Ra-ik's suicidal despair flooded Se-na's consciousness so violently that her own past began to scramble before her eyes. The cold operating rooms. The sterile apartment where no one ever waited for her. The solitary meals. The bitter realization that in her previous life, if she had vanished, no one would have cried.

What was the point? the dark thought echoed through their shared brain. What was the use of my life? My existence? Why keep fighting when every room I walk into wants me dead?

For a terrifying, intoxicating second, Se-na felt herself leaning into the drop. The void felt warm. The dark felt like rest.

"NO!" Se-na shrieked into the empty air, her body trembling violently as she fought with every ounce of her identity to drag herself back from the edge of his depression. "SE-NA, THIS IS NOT YOU! THIS IS RA-IK! Please... Do Ra-ik, don't do this to me! DON'T DO THIS TO US!"

She was holding onto the steel bar with one trembling hand, one loose grip away from plummeting into the pavement.

Then, she felt it.

It wasn't a violent fight for control. It was far worse. Ra-ik's will simply gave out.

Se-na could feel his control snapping not like a breaking bone, but like a sudden, shameful surrender of the body. It was like losing complete, involuntary control of your bowels right in front of a staring crowd. A moment so excruciatingly humiliating, so sickeningly embarrassing that you would instantly choose death over living through the disgrace. Yet, underneath the burning shame and the urge to turn to dust, there came an animalistic, primal wave of physical release. The agonizing pressure dissolved. The desperate holding on simply ended. It was a horrifying, pathetic dilemma sobbing out of pure, naked helplessness while simultaneously drowning in the quiet, sweet bliss of finally letting go.

Her breath hitched. Hot, blinding tears overflowed her eyes, blurring the glittering city lights into streaks of gold and red.

The hand slipped.

The wind roared in her ears, her stomach plummeted into her throat, and the world spun into pitchblack darkness.

Beep... beep... beep...

The rhythmic, sterile sound of a heart monitor was the first thing to pierce the darkness.

When Se-na finally managed to flutter her eyelids open, the icy gale and the midnight sky were gone. Soft, fluorescent light bathed a private hospital room. She tried to lift her arm to rub her eyes, but nothing happened.

She tried to turn her head toward the door, but her neck felt as heavy as a block of cement. Panic surged through her as she tried to flex her ankles, her toes, her fingers nothing moved.

Her entire body was locked in place, stiff, bound, and completely unresponsive on the hospital mattress. She couldn't move a single finger. She was a brilliant surgeon trapped inside a silent, paralyzed cage.

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The echo of the shattered metal tray was still vibrating through the VIP corridor when Se-na stepped through the open door of Room 802.

Inside, the room was in total ruin. An IV pole had been upended, spilling saline across the hardwood floor. Monitors beeped frantically, their leads torn free and dangling like dead vines. Standing in the center of it all, clutching his hospital gown against his chest with a blood-soaked bandage showing beneath the fabric, was Do Ra-ik.

He looked wild. His dark hair was matted with sweat, his hollow eyes burning with a terrifying, incandescent rage.

"WHO SAID TO SAVE ME?!" he roared again, his voice cracking violently as he grabbed a ceramic vase from the bedside table, ready to hurl it at Dr. Choi, who was ducking behind a medical cart. "I SIGNED IT! I SIGNED THE DNR! YOU HAD NO RIGHT!"

Se-na didn't stop to think. She didn't calculate the professional risks, nor did she consider the ethics board already sharpening their knives for her.

She walked straight through the puddle of saline, still barefoot, stepped over a fallen monitor, and closed the distance between them.

Ra-ik raised his arm to throw the vase, and Se-na met him.

THRASH!

The sound cracked through the room like a pistol shot.

Ra-ik's head snapped to the side. The ceramic vase slipped from his numb fingers, crashing onto the floor. There was silence, absolute, suffocating silence that fell over Room 802. Dr. Choi froze in the doorway, his mouth half-open in utter horror. The two attending nurses gasped in unison.

Ra-ik stood frozen, his hand slowly coming up to touch his stinging cheek. He slowly turned his head back to look at her.

For the first time, their eyes met in the physical world.

Se-na's heart hammered against her ribs as she stared into those dark, exhausted eyes. She recognized every line in his face, every drop of bitterness in his gaze. She had inhabited those eyes. She had looked out at the glittering city from a hundred stories up through those exact pupils.

"Does that sting?" Se-na asked, her voice dropping into an icy, unyielding register that cut through the room like a scalpel. She took a sharp step forward, poking her index finger hard against his bloodied chest bandage. "Does your cheek hurt, Do Ra-ik? Answer me! Does a simple slap sting?!"

Ra-ik stumbled backward half an inch, blinking in utter shock. "You..." he rasped, his eyes narrowing as a flicker of phantom recognition flashed behind his gaze. "Who... who the hell are you…"

"Didn't it hurt more when you threw yourself off a hundred-story building?!" Se-na shouted, shoving her finger into his sternum again, forcing him back toward the bed. Her eyes blazed with a raw, terrifying fury that surpassed even his own. "When every muscle, every cell, every single nerve in your body was screaming and begging you to hold on, you didn't care to fight! You didn't fight to live like you're fighting right now to throw a pathetic temper tantrum!"

"I didn't ask…" Ra-ik tried to growl, his voice trembling, but Se-na didn't give him room to breathe.

"Shut up!" she barked, pushing him back yet again. "NOR DID I!!! You selfish, reckless bastard! You think you were the only one terrified on that ledge? You think you were the only one suffering when you let go?!"

She was breathing heavily, her fists clenching so hard her short nails bit into her palms. In that moment, Se-na wasn't just a doctor reprimanding a hysterical patient. She was the victim standing in front of her tormentor. She was the soul that had been dragged down into the dark against her will, the person who had begged inside his mind for him to stop while he turned a deaf ear and plummeted into the void.

Ra-ik stared at her, his mouth slightly open, completely stunned into silence by the sheer magnitude of her rage and the uncanny, impossible weight of her words.

"You didn't fight then, so don't you dare act like a brave warrior now," Se-na hissed, her voice trembling withheld-back rage. She turned her head slightly toward the doorway without breaking her glare on him. "Dr. Choi! Nurses! What are you standing there gaping for? Do your jobs and stabilize him!"

Dr. Choi snapped out of his trance. "Hold him! Sedative, now!"

Three orderlies and two nurses burst into the room with a pre-filled syringe. The orderlies tackled Ra-ik from behind, forcing his weakened, unresisting body back onto the mattress. Ra-ik didn't even fight them this time; his dark, bewildered eyes remained locked on Se-na, searching her face frantically as if trying to decipher a ghost.

A nurse pressed a vial of Lorazepam into the Y-port of his IV line.

Within seconds, the violent tremors in Ra-ik's limbs began to subside. His heavy breathing slowed into a drug-induced rhythm. As his eyelids fluttered shut, his gaze remained fixed on Se-na—filled not with anger anymore, but with a deep, burning, unanswered question—before he finally slipped into unconsciousness.

Ten minutes later, Se-na stood outside in the quiet corridor, her knuckles still red. Dr. Choi was pacing beside her, rubbing his temples furiously.

Are you insane, Dr. Maeng?!" Dr. Choi hissed under his breath. "Twice?! You hit him twice?! First in the ER and now in front of the entire floor staff?!"

"He was pulling his central line and endangering the staff," Se-na said flatly, though her own fingers were trembling behind her. "And what was he screaming about? A DNR?"

Dr. Choi let out a heavy sigh, adjusting his glasses. "Yes. His legal team had a Do Not Resuscitate order on file with the legal department. It came through right as he was being brought in by the paramedics."

"Then why … resuscitate!!!?" Se-na asked, her brow furrowing. "If he had a valid DNR, the hospital would never have allowed us to bypass it."

"You didn't look in your senses at that time and you are asking me this question??? With the way you were acting when if we told you... you wouldn't back away would you?"

"i…." but Choi cut her, before she could say anything, "Also … Because it wasn't valid," he revealed, leaning in closer. "The legal board threw it out thirty minutes after he arrived. The DNR was submitted six months ago by Do Hyun-joo's legal proxies not by Ra-ik himself. Furthermore, because he was brought in with acute traumatic injuries and blood loss under circumstances suggesting third-party endangerment, the emergency medical doctrine overrode it. Ra-ik was deemed incapacitated, and the document was flagged for fraud and duress. Legally, his DNR was null and void the moment he crossed our threshold."

Se-na swallowed hard. Null and void. Ra-ik had built his entire surrender around that piece of paper, believing he had bought his escape only for the system to force him back to life anyway.

"Regardless of his DNR," Dr. Choi added grimly, looking at her with genuine pity, "you have bigger problems now, Dr. Maeng. Director Kang wants you in the board room. Immediately."

The Ethics Committee chamber was cold, sterile, and designed to intimidate.

Se-na stood at the center of the dark wood floor, facing a crescent table where five senior board members, including Director Kang, sat with her personnel file open before them.

"Dr. Maeng Se-na," Director Kang began, his voice echoing off the paneled walls. "Your record at this hospital has been exemplary. You are, without a doubt, one of the finest cardiac surgeons this institution has ever produced. Which makes this hearing all the more painful."

He gestured to the tablet in front of him. "We have reviewed the incident reports from the ER, as well as the security footage from Room 802 earlier today. On two separate occasions, you physically assaulted a patient in critical condition."

"I restored a heart rhythm during an acute arrest," Se-na said steadily, keeping her chin up. "And I stabilized an uncooperative patient who was tearing out his own arterial line."

"By slapping him!" a board member snapped. "Dr. Maeng, this is a flagrant violation of medical protocols, patient rights, and fundamental decorum! If the public or the media hears that Chief Surgeon Maeng Se-na physically strikes comatose and recovering patients, the reputation of this hospital will be ruined!"

"The family specifically Mr. Do Hyun-joo is already threatening a massive lawsuit," Director Kang added gravely. "We cannot sweep this under the rug, Maeng Se-na. Your actions were reckless, unprofessional, and violent."

Silence settled over the room. Se-na didn't offer another defense. In the world of medicine, she knew the rules: once the board decided you were a liability, no number of saved lives could clear your name.

Director Kang cleared his throat and read from the official verdict paper.

"Effective immediately, Dr. Maeng Se-na is assessed a formal disciplinary fine of fifty million won, to be docked from your hospital equity.

Se-na didn't flinch at the money. But Director Kang wasn't finished.

"Furthermore," Kang continued, his voice cold and definitive, "your surgical privileges are suspended indefinitely until further notice. You are strictly forbidden from setting foot inside any Operating Theater, scrub room, or surgical bay within this facility until a full psychological evaluation is completed. You are stripped of your active cases."

The words hit Se-na like a physical blow.

No operating theater!

For Maeng Se-na, the surgical suite wasn't just a workplace it was her entire identity, her sanctuary, the only place where she held absolute control over life and death. Stripping her of her scalpel was no different than locking her in a cage.

"Do you understand the ruling, Dr. Maeng?" Director Kang asked.

Se-na stood tall, her hands clenched tightly at her sides until her knuckles turned white.

"I understand," she said softly.

She turned and walked out of the board room, the heavy doors closing behind her with the finality of a prison vault.

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