Running in Parallels

i.

"What's the situation?"  Chaeyoung asked as she speed-walked towards the surgical preparation room, shrugging off her white coat in the process.  Jeongyeon, her trusty friend and aide, followed her closely with a clipboard in hand.

"Critical.  The patient is a 15-year-old female with bacterial meningitis.  She wasn't treated fast enough with antibiotics and now has complications associated with cranial nerve dysfunction and ataxia," Jeongyeon reported.

"I need to go into the brain, the spinal cord," Chaeyoung said as she entered the cold room, putting on her blue scrubs and washing her hands at the sink.  "You'll assist me as usual, unnie. Ask the fellows to prep the operating room for me."

The emergency procedure lasted 16 hours, and ended with Chaeyoung successfully saving yet another patient's life.  It was 4am when she left the operating theatre again, but it was worth it. Always.

Chaeyoung was the most accredited neurological surgeon in Seoul, South Korea despite her age.  It only made sense that she was assigned all the emergency cases in Seoul National Hospital that had to do with her specialty.  The operation that Chaeyoung just performed was another example of a critical case: an infection of the brain being mistreated, resulting in nervous system damage.  Chaeyoung had great pride in her medical specialty of neuroscience and neurosurgery, because she believed that it was one of the most (if not, the most) important branch of medicine.  "The brain is the core of the body, therefore by operating on it, we are the brain of medicine," was what her previous attending physician taught her. Chaeyoung studied hard and met all the challenges in her years of medical residency and fellowship with grit and determination.  She climbed the ranks at a speed unknown to her peers and was now standing at number one, with nowhere to go but further up.

Chaeyoung's fulfilling career was associated with multiple life stresses, of course.  She had to deal with getting to or coming from the hospital at odd hours in the night, so her already minimal sleep was always interrupted and she was always deprived.  She had a crippling coffee dependency. Her social skills had basically dwindled to nothing since she had no time for herself anymore.

But Chaeyoung was rich, though, and anyone in the country could vouch for that.  She owned a multi-storied mansion, Victorian-style on the outside, but modern on the inside.  Besides the lavish and spacious front and back yards, the interiors were decked out with white and glass furnishings.  Chaeyoung was the proud owner of magnificent functional house rooms, in addition to her library, indoor pool, home gym, games arcade, mini golf range, rooftop observatory, and more bedrooms than she needed.  In fact, her wealth was so ridiculously unattainable that she had a Ferrari 458 Italia parked safely in her garage.

All her assets inevitably attracted a large amount of public attention.  To prevent any trespassing or theft, Chaeyoung installed a state-of-the-art security system all around her private property.  She could monitor her security cameras at any time, and if unauthorised personnel stepped onto her land, it'd trigger an alarm.

Chaeyoung was starting to notice something strange happening outside.  You see, her house was so grand that it had become a landmark, a national attraction of sorts.  Tourists and locals would come and hang out outside to look around and take photographs, but the crowd usually thinned out on the nights Chaeyoung came home at ungodly hours.  But the strange thing was, Chaeyoung was beginning to notice a regular visitor. A girl who looked to be about her age, maybe a couple of years older, with long black hair. Her hair shone under the street lamps.  Chaeyoung had been observing her for months now, long enough to notice that the girl changed her hair colour often, from black to ginger to brown to black again. Chaeyoung was rarely home early enough to notice her visitors and remember the faces of repeat ones, but here she was.  There was one time the girl turned slightly, giving Chaeyoung a clearer view of her face. She was pretty. Too pretty to be standing out alone on the street in the middle of the night, every night.

Chaeyoung was confused.  She knew the girl wasn't here to admire her house; she rarely even looked in the direction of it.  She always faced the road, as if she was waiting for someone to pick her up. Sometimes, when Chaeyoung turned away to attend to something else, the girl would disappear for the night, only to reappear on a following night when Chaeyoung could see her again.

Why was she here?

Chaeyoung was not into the habit of people-watching, and certainly not after long, arduous work shifts either.  She usually collapsed into her soft comforter immediately after coming home from work. But she found her attention completely captured by this mysterious girl on the street corner outside, who always stayed out too late and wore clothing which was too revealing.  She was an attractive woman and it was a huge compromise to her safety. It worried Chaeyoung more than it should've, for she was only a stranger.

"You're reassigning me?"  Mina asked, standing in front of her handler in a dimly lit room he called his 'office'.

"Yeah.  I'll have Sana take over your old station," Chanyeol hummed.  He paused for a moment before looking up at Mina. "Do you know Son Chaeyoung?"

"The neurosurgeon?"

"Yes, her.  She has this huge mansion on the outskirts.  I'll drop you off there at 11pm every night to pick up customers.  There are loads there."

"At the mansion?"  Mina asked.

"No, on the street outside," Chanyeol responded, slightly annoyed.