Boss, It's My First Time Being Your Resident - Chapter 23

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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Chapter 23. Like an Amateur

“Did you just call me a bodyguard?”

Woo-seop had kept his eyes lowered for a moment, then slowly raised his head. In the silence, his gaze fixed on Tae-heon.

It was a wordless warning.

“What, you have a problem with that?”
“I was only trying to protect her because I don’t think you’re treating A-gang like a junior colleague.”

‘What’s gotten into you?’

Confusion flickered across A-gang’s eyes, but Woo-seop had no intention of backing down.

His bristling at the word “bodyguard” had been a momentary defense mechanism.

But what drove him to the edge was—
the way that pig of a gangster lying in bed now had raked his filthy eyes across A-gang’s collarbones like some heat-addled animal.

No, that wasn’t even it. The real thing was—

when sunlight streamed long through the window, and Tae-heon’s gaze had drifted toward A-gang’s eyes, beautiful as painted picture,
then shifted, almost absently, to her full lips,
and finally lingered on the back of her neck, where fine, pale down caught the light—
a strange premonition had seized him, and the feeling turned ugly in a way he couldn’t suppress.

Was this what it felt like to be a third party, watching two people’s glances brush past each other, always at a distance?

His blood had roiled backward.

As A-gang’s longtime friend, prudence was Sim Woo-seop’s cardinal virtue.
Yet the longer he spent with her, the more his instinct shouldered past reason—and he couldn’t fathom why.

From the moment he’d decided to stay by her side, he’d sworn he would never abandon his principles, never let his heart race ahead of his mind.

As memory upon memory stacked backward to eight years ago, A-gang tugged at his sleeve.

‘Stop it.’

Through the fabric she held, he felt her wordless plea raw and plain.

At the same time, Do, standing across from them watching the tension play out, rushed in with a forced laugh.

“Whoa, Sim Woo-seop! When I came down the other day, I saw someone so physically ripped walking around that I thought he was a model. It was you? So you’re that monstrous new hire everyone keeps talking about.”
“That’s the first I’m hearing of it, sir.”

Woo-seop replied flatly without shifting his gaze from Tae-heon.

“Come on, the rumors are already flying everywhere. You’re famous. There’s a legend about this one ace hidden away each year by seniority. This year, it’s you.”
“I wouldn’t know anything about that, sir.”
“Sure, sure. Your cool demeanor is a skill in itself! Come down often and do some real work for us, will you?”

Do’s eyes widened as he patted Woo-seop’s shoulder with his characteristic easy manner.

“Geez! You’ve been working out, haven’t you? Your shoulders and lats—why are they so hard? Like stone, like stone.”
“At OS, fitness is survival.”
“OS found themselves a real gem! Our new carpenter.”

The sight of Do straining to dispel the lethal atmosphere was heartbreaking to watch.

Just when the moment seemed endless—

“Senior! Facial structures are my specialty! Of course I should take this!”

A-gang quickly intercepted the suturing kit from the nurse’s hands.

Woo-seop’s gaze, which had been trained on Tae-heon, now followed A-gang’s retreating figure.
Her steps toward the gangster were brisk, almost eager.

***

Like an amateur, huh? Tch!

A-gang plunged the syringe into the vial of Lidocaine and replayed the words Tae-heon had thrown at her.

Amateur.
Those four short letters scratched uncomfortably at some corner of her heart.

Six brutal, hard-fought years of medical school, and one year as an intern.

Not a single night when she’d slept at ease, not once when she’d been careless with her work or cut corners.

Every second, every moment had been earnest; every moment had felt precious.

How could he say something so lightly?

The clear anesthetic bubbling up into the syringe seemed to churn like her thoughts right now.

The man, it seemed, had recovered enough to whine, and he fixed A-gang with a sticky stare.

“I hate pain. Be gentle with me, okay? You pretty thing.”

She wanted to backhand him right then, but instead she carved patience into her heart and continued the work.

As she began sterilizing the wound with a cotton pad soaked in Betadine, rolling it in gentle circles, the man started rattling off random talk.

“You ever raise a dog?”
“No, I haven’t.”
“You know how stupid dogs are?”

The words ‘Sir, please keep quiet’ rose to her throat—

“Don’t let it show. That look. You’ll look like an amateur.”

Tae-heon’s cold warning echoed in her ears.
If she showed her feelings now, she’d prove his words right—prove she was exactly what he said she was.

A-gang gripped the forceps so tightly she thought she might snap them.

“A-gang? What are you thinking so hard about?”

Do, who’d just returned from the CT Room, sidled up cautiously.

“Nothing at all.”

Could he see everything written on her face already?
Do patted her shoulder sympathetically, called out a quiet ‘hang in there,’ and vanished.

Oblivious, the man droned on.

“The dogs I raise are all stupid bastards. Even when I step on them, they wag their tails. All day they eat and shit—their brains get slower.”
“Is that stupidity?”

Loyalty, isn’t it?
A-gang let out a dry laugh and fired back, but the man just giggled as if amused.

“You’re too naive to understand. Listen—I was pinned under a steel beam, and that dog bastard came and dragged me out. See? Even after all that, he kept crawling toward me like I was still his master. The weak instinctively recognize the strong, that’s what I’m saying!”

Nausea rose; she couldn’t bear to listen to any more of his sophistry.

“This will sting a bit, sir. I’m administering the anesthetic.”

A-gang drove the syringe mercilessly into the gaping wound.

“Aaahhh! God, I’m dying, I’m dead. You doing this right?”

So he couldn’t even handle a splinter under his fingernail without screaming, yet the dogs could have their flesh torn open and it didn’t matter?

The images of the rescued dogs the nurse had shown her earlier flashed before her eyes—their pathetic forms, the hellish life they must have endured in the dogfighting ring.

Part of her wanted to sew him up so that scars remained, to carve a scarlet letter across his forehead. But wishes were wishes; reality was reality.

A-gang gritted her teeth and barely held down the roiling emotions.

“I’ll take it.”

She extended her hand to the nurse, and the needle holder, threaded with suture, was placed firmly in her palm.
The thread, finer than a human hair, stretched taut into the air.

A-gang began the micro-suturing with deft, precise movements.

The greatest difference between plastic surgery and other surgical disciplines lay precisely in this technique.

While other specialties prioritized functional recovery, aesthetics could not be ignored here—minimizing scarring came first.

Although she’d been assigned to the Trauma Center where survival took precedence, a Plastic Surgeon’s duty could never be forgotten.

“The key to micro-suturing is like this—layer by layer, stitch after stitch, tight and even. Muscle, then dermis, then epidermis, each separately, one stitch at a time, understand?”

Reciting her professor’s lessons like a mantra, A-gang began meticulously stitching the gangster’s forehead with careful, deliberate precision.

Finally. Her first mission complete!

“Senior! I’ve finished the suturing here!”

A-gang called out to Tae-heon with pride swelling in her chest.

She wanted desperately to prove to him that she was not an amateur.

***

Tae-heon stared at A-gang as she waved cheerfully toward him.

Without a word, he approached her side and examined the sutured wound closely. His brow grew tighter and tighter.

“Come here for a moment.”

Tae-heon called A-gang to the end of the Corridor in the Medical Treatment Area.

“Are you in your right mind? Go apologize to the patient and redo the sutures immediately.”
“I’m not sure what you mean, sir……”

A-gang looked up at Tae-heon with bewilderment in her eyes.
The unexpected reprimand made her hands tremble.

“You really don’t know?”
“No. I did my best……”

She’d made no mistakes. The suturing was flawless.
Anyone could see it was meticulous, delicate, perfect.

She’d even heeded the words Tae-heon had carelessly dropped in the hallway before dawn, crossing the knot twice more to make it secure.

Every time the man had uttered something vile during the procedure, she’d fought the urge to stop, but she’d conquered her personal feelings and completed the task.

“You call yourself a Plastic Surgeon, yet you can’t even execute a basic suturing technique? How am I supposed to understand Ju A-gang?”

Sharp criticism cut through the air from Tae-heon.

The pride that had soared skyward crashed to the ground like a deflated balloon.

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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