IT JUST IS ukai keishin

001. (THE YOUNG DOCTOR)

  

          It was an abnormally warm day when she walked out of Yulje Medical Center with a duffel bag and a small backpack that contained every single document that could possibly verify her citizenship. Snow was beginning to melt in the mid-January warm spell resulting in an ashen slush that more resembled the level of air pollution in Seoul. It felt like walking from a climate-controlled oven into a frozen tundra. If the hand of God wished to barge into her life at this exact moment, he too would be disgusted by the small patch of ostentatiously dry warmth in the season he specified to be cold.

Upon graduating from her time as a formal student and moving into internal medicine where she occupied her own office, she never really found the time to vacate her little bunk in her aunt's old apartment even after her bank account reflected her pay raise. Her bunk is a bit lower than the others because she gets up too quickly and would hit her head on the ceiling too often as a child. Besides, it was easier to kick off her shoes and fall asleep in her street clothes closer to the ground. It was easier to breathe.

She lived with eight other people employed so graciously by Yulje Medical Center. Nurses, doctors, janitors, a line cook, and administrative assistants. They had at least one person from each of those pools, and it made for cheap rent and someone's almost spoiled leftovers to eat in the middle of the night after a long shift. After all her aunt never asked just how many people were living out of a four-bedroom apartment, and it wasn't necessarily a secret that there were more people there than fire regulations allowed. Besides, now they were going down to eight in lieu of the young doctor's departure.

Metaphorically speaking, Seoul was the pinnacle of her life apart from her family. Wildly bright lights and rambunctious people populated the streets and sidewalks day and night. No matter where she turned there was always vibrant pulsating life. A stark contrast to her family home isolated in the mountains, twenty minutes away from the nearest sight of human society.

Her father's older sister had taken her in, but her and her family were solely motivated by their own individual education and careers. It was like living at a boarding house with how she was unsure of just where anyone was. Occasionally, they would have a large dinner at an extravagant restaurant, where everyone would talk and eat so quickly with the promise of a less rushed dinner at another time. If she hadn't attended the same university as the youngest son, she never would've seen the rest of her family until the days leading up to redemption of her childhood.

All of them visited the Medical Center and pulled her out for coffee during her break in her last days with trinkets to remind her of the life she lived within Seoul and snacks that she dutifully shared with the other residents rather than saving in her backpack for the 36-hour trek she booked to get to Sendai Station.

She's already said her goodbyes, her few tears shed as her bunkmate hugs her and wishes her well. A strange dynamic exists between the two now. Rather than two doctors hardened by long shifts and difficult patients, one had been corroded by the stain of a broken heart.

Everyone regarded her like that now. It was impossible to escape the lingering glares and the absurd number of times her patient chart was tossed around. She doesn't blame them; she would've taken a peek too if it were someone else. And it's not like she's leaving on bad terms. Just, she can't physically handle the sheer density of life packed around her slight being anymore. Her frail heart was not constructed to become faster or better but was rather placed in her chest cavity to simply beat and flow with enough blood to get her through activities of daily life.

She was not meant to survive a heart attack, much less have one in the first place.

The young woman nearing her thirties resigned to the fact that she was no longer what she once was. She hasn't touched a drop of alcohol since she was 21 (and she accidentally kissed a professor out of drunken stupidity at an off-hours party) and she stopped smoking cigarettes when she was admitted to medical school—something about it seemed redundant—, and she even found herself paying attention to what she ate in a (vain) effort to remain where she was. Following her downfall, she couldn't run to patients anymore and she couldn't yell even if she wanted to. She felt like everything around her was moving backwards with how so very slow she was merely existing.

She couldn't consider it living anymore.