Whisper In Her Ear - Winrina

1 - Throwback

June, 2023 - 1.00 a.m.

Minjeong pushed the door to the sleeping quarter open and was welcomed by thick darkness spreading before her eyes. All the lamps were turned off and the room was entirely quiet save for the soft snoring noises coming from her friends.

She walked inside with a sigh, dropping her white coat carelessly on a chair and stepping on something on her way to bed — probably someone's shirt or underwear — but paid it no attention as she only kicked it aside tiredly.

"Ningning, wake up. It's your turn to watch the Emergency Room." Minjeong shoved the sleeping girl on the upper bunk lazily and flopped on her own bed, feeling her muscles stretch in gratitude after a long day of hospital labour.

The girl above her bunk only grunted slightly, mumbling something in her sleep and refusing to wake up.

Minjeong exhaled. "There were three car-crash patients coming in when I left. If you don't hurry there now and they end up bleeding to death, it's not my fault because your shift started literally a minute ago."

"What?" Ningning, who refused to open her eyes a while ago, jolted up immediately at the mention of critical patients and scrambled down from her bed.

"Are you crazy? You should have waited for me to go there before you left! How could you leave right on clock when there were people dying?"

Minjeong cracked one eye open, face indifferent to her colleague's anger. "If I stayed there and waited for you to come, what time do you think you will wake up on your own?"

Ningning seethed, her face blushing red in a mix of anger and embarrassment. Minjeong only closed her eyes again offhandedly. "Maybe you should learn to set an alarm clock for yourself before preaching me about responsibility."

"You, really—"

"What's going on here? People are trying to sleep." A younger girl named Eunchae who was sleeping on the bunk across them rose blearily.

"Nothing. Just Kim being asshole as always." Ningning answered spitefully, throwing a glare once again at Minjeong who was now sleeping with her back turned on her. "I will never understand why someone as uncaring as her is here to be a doctor. I hope karma smacks her with a cold lesson one day."

She muttered some more profanities on her way out, slamming the door shut.

"Minjeong unnie, are you okay?" Eunchae asked and waited for response, but the amber haired girl gave her nothing. After a while, she sighed and went back to sleep, assuming that Minjeong had drifted off to slumber. But contrary to what she believed, Minjeong was still wide awake.

Her body curled up under her blanket and her eyes remained wide open.

Karma?

What rights does karma have to hit on her?

Minjeong scoffed softly at the thoughts.

All her 22 years of life she had been living with days that felt more like a punishment than a blessing.

Karma?

Her eyes traveled far into the darkness as she shut them off.

If there was such thing as karma, it owed her the life she missed when she looked at the mirror ten years ago and realized that she was different from her friends. Not a punishment.

***

September, 2008

Kim Minjeong was an ordinary child.