Above and Below // SeongJoong

1. Seonghwa's Jobs

DISCLAIMER: I have limited knowledge of the law, so please excuse any mistakes or inaccurate representations of reality. This is fiction, and everything that happens does not reflect any real events.

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The pure white LED lights were beating on his head like the sun on a midsummer day. Perspiration dotted his forehead where the cotton cap clung to his skin, and his thick mat of hair within steamed as if trying to suffocate his brain.

Seonghwa wished he could just push those lights away, but there were good reasons not to. The intense brightness was a halo that encapsulated him, shutting out the inky blackness of the operating room and the people hidden inside that he would otherwise lose focus to. It helped him see into the things he worked with, which in this case was a man's severed throat. Oh, and of course, his hands were too bloody to touch anything else.

A drop of sweat escaped his left brow and pierced his unblinking eye before rolling down his cheek to settle in the edge of his mask. He really wished Wooyoung would pay more attention and helped dab his face dry like any other nurse would, but he supposed he could not blame him. The lad had always been fearful of any gang member that was not Seonghwa, especially their district leader, Yeosang. Besides, it would do him good not to have San distracting him all the time. Yet as it so happened, both of them were here to watch the surgeon finish his last gig of the day.

"Wooyoung, what did I tell you?" Yeosang's steely voice delivered a chill in the background. "Stand straight, and stop looking around. Or do you need my guards to help you keep your eyes on your patient?"

The nurse flinched and lowered his eyes to the wet wound in Seonghwa's gloved fingers. Poor guy, Seonghwa thought. Like himself, the young man's promising future had been tarnished ever since it had fallen into the hands of the Salgeum gang, the most formidable in the area. Would that he could try to free him from this unsparing grip, but what was a surgeon without a nurse?

"Aw, don't be so serious." It was San talking now, ever the flippant one. "Woo's been standing for hours. Right, hyung?"

Seonghwa did not like to think that he was brothers with gangsters now, though he would sooner have that than someone addressing him as a doctor. He was not one, at least not truly. He scanned the red cavern one last time for any forgotten sponges, tossed his forceps onto the discard tray, and put his palm up in front of Wooyoung. "Needle and thread."

His audience had the decency to remain quiet while he finished up the suture, and for that he was grateful. No sooner had he disposed of his plastic gloves and shaken loose his damp hair did two burly men in pressed black suits emerge from the dark, pushing an empty hospital bed towards the operating table.

While he peeled the rest of his scrubs off, Wooyoung buzzed around their workspace to clean up after the mess. Someone flipped the switches, and light slowly returned to the rest of the basement in a soft glow. His patient was being wheeled to the far end of the rectangular room, where he will be left to recover until he would be deemed ready by Seonghwa and discharged to the surface again.

Once the bodyguard duo returned to their master, the real purpose of this meeting could finally be addressed. San scooched to the edge of the couch eagerly as Seonghwa and Wooyoung joined the group in the lounge area on the opposite side of the operating table. Yeosang gave an imperceptible nod, and the men on either edge of his armchair picked up an aluminum briefcase off the floor beside each of their feet.

Before they could reach the surgeon or the nurse, San jumped up and snatched the package from the bald man, racing to deliver it to Wooyoung himself. "Woo, here's your compensation! You so deserve it. You can finally buy the shoes you've always wanted!"