A Hundred Times

Professor, Heal Thyself

A/N: So I got a bizarre CC prompt...and this AU one shot happened!

Theology Professor Ri Jeong-hyeok and Chiropractor Yoon Seri. How would they meet?

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"Jeong-hyeok," Seo Dan sighed. "Why don't you see someone for your back?"

The question came after she had watched Ri Jeong-hyeok for the past twenty minutes, as he tried to straighten his shoulders using various contortions and with increasing expressions of soreness on his face.

They were supposed to be having lunch, the first time they'd seen each other in two months, even though they were both faculty members at Oxford and had known each other since they started their PhDs at the same university.

The community of graduate students from South Korea was small and tight-knit; Jeong-hyeok was the only student pursuing Theology, and Seo Dan was one of two students pursuing music theory.

Jeong-hyeok had always been unusual in more ways than simply his field of study, though. His rapid career progression was spoken about in hushed whispers of awe all throughout Oxford. No other student had progressed from graduate student to assistant professor, and now associate professor in such a short amount of time. He read and even spoke Hebrew, Greek, Latin, and Old English, in addition to his native fluency in Korean. His analyses were sharp and insightful, and yet surprisingly eloquent and even poetic at times.

The man was also a notoriously hard worker. Seo Dan was no great socializer, but occasionally in her graduate student days, she had joined her friends in soirees that usually involved them all getting tipsy on soju mixed with Dandelion & Burdock -- a gruesome yet addicting fusion invented by Alberto Gu, then-president of the Korean Students Association. Now her boyfriend.

Jeong-hyeok had never gone to such parties, though. He had always been laser focused on his work, and routinely spent upwards of twelve hours a day in the Bodleian library. He would arrive at seven AM sharp and remain there sometimes till midnight, bent over thick Latin tomes, painted Medieval books, manuscripts of delicate papyrus. Even after he became an associate professor, he would stick to this routine on weekends.

As a result, though, it was becoming common knowledge that Jeong-hyeok's back was giving out. More often or not, students in his seminar would catch him grimacing for a split instant when changing posture at the podium. One grateful student had bought him a small back massager for Christmas, and he was seen with it so much that soon the students began to joke about it.

"Oh, what I wouldn't give to be that massager," one female student sighed, looking enviously at where Jeong-hyeok was pressing the machine into his shoulders, sitting at a distance from them.

"I know, right? I would like to be acquainted with those shoulders." her friend whispered in agreement.

"I would like to be a mosquito and just... nip one of those trapezius muscles," the third friend murmured, her blue eyes fixed on Professor Ri.

The other two looked at her a bit strangely.

"What?" she asked. "Oh, don't look so shocked."

Jeong-hyeok had no idea of the havoc his broad back - and problems in said back - were wreaking on the female population of Oxford. The man was simply too absorbed in work. Even the pain in his shoulders and lower back would recede as soon as he started talking about the fifty translations of the Hebrew word davar.

"I don't need to see a chiropractor," he says to Seo Dan at lunch. "This is all just temporary. Too many hours working."

"You say that every time I see you," Seo Dan points out. "But it just seems to be getting worse, not better. The way you're going, you'll be incapacitated in a few years. Go to a doctor."