Boss, It's My First Time Being Your Resident - Chapter 28

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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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Episode 28. An Innocent Accusation Reversal

“Why? Does it sting?”
“Yes, it stings.”
“See? See? Everything my friend said was right!”

Beside Tae Heon, who answered with what seemed like resignation and indifference, A Gang pressed forward, seizing the momentum.

“That night! I could’ve frozen to death, and you told me to take off my clothes, didn’t you? Because you wanted to sleep with me! I knew something was weird!”

Tae Heon let out a stifled laugh, as if flabbergasted, and stepped harder on the accelerator.

“Whether I’m wearing wet clothes or not! Whether I freeze to death or not! You could’ve just walked on by, sir. What business is any of this of yours, anyway?”

Even an accusation reversal has its limits.
How could someone misconstrue things this badly?

A bitter laugh escaped him, but thinking that he’d ultimately brought this misunderstanding upon himself by giving her reason to doubt, Tae Heon quietly endured the rest of her complaints.

“And! You could’ve just thrown a blanket over me! Why did you have to hold me? Huh? Why? You’re seriously weird!”

So he should’ve just let her die in that situation?
He’d need to reread the textbook.

Tae Heon muttered under his breath and tapped the steering wheel with his fingers.

Removing the wet clothes had been a doctor’s cold, rational judgment for survival.
But he couldn’t deny it.

How could he forget?
The woman’s fragrance that seeped in through his nostrils in that fleeting moment.

The softness of her skin, like down feathers.

A peach scent sweet as ripe fruit flesh, that fresh, delicate skin-scent that wafted with each moment—it still lingered so vividly in his mind.

Restraining instinctive desire all night long had taken discipline.

“So you were deeply wronged? Because I held you?”
“Yes, you bastard. And you! Close your eyes, why don’t you? Huh?”
“Isn’t it six of one, half a dozen of the other? You saw too, after all. Very clearly, I might add.”
“I… I was…”

A Gang, flustered, swallowed a hiccup as her face flushed crimson.

“I was looking at that scar on your chest because it was fascinating, that’s why! Anyway! You’re a repressed, perverted bastard!”

Two-faced bastard, repressed bastard, perverted bastard.
Words that poured from the woman’s mouth in half an hour.

So Ju A Gang had been defining him this way all along.

Tae Heon found it absurd, yet oddly, his mood felt strange.
It was an insult he’d never heard in his life, yet somehow his lips kept quirking into a faint smile.

“You break up with me safely! So Dam told me everything! That way you won’t think about me anymore! That way I won’t be tormented!”
“What? Break up?”
“Yes! You just wait!”

Her head drooped after the spirited declaration, and then she slipped back into deep sleep, nodding gently forward.

The car came to a stop in the garage of Tae Heon’s house.

As the engine cut off, quiet silence descended.
Tae Heon leaned back against the seat and turned his head to gaze gently at A Gang’s sleeping profile in the dim light.

When she was treating him like a criminal, where was she? And now she sleeps so defenseless.
The more he looked, the more everything about her seemed arbitrary and willful.

“A safe breakup? Not by my say-so.”

Tae Heon murmured softly and opened the car door. Then he scooped up the unconscious A Gang in his arms.

***

“Loosen up! Tension free! Yes, okay!”

Tae Heon looked down at A Gang, who lay on his bed talking in her sleep.

Her two hands clenched tightly as if still living through the day’s ordeal even in her dream—it struck him as pitiful.

Had he been too harsh?

He found himself troubled by the sight of her filling even her only moment of rest—sleep—with hospital work.

He carefully undid the rubber band that had been pulled tightly over her hair without letting it catch, and gently brushed the strands of hair that had fallen across her forehead to the side.

Then he retrieved the ointment and band-aids he’d been keeping deep in his pocket and set them on the headboard of her bed.

The sight of Ju A Gang crying pitifully, hidden at the end of the corridor that afternoon, had haunted him ever since.

By the time he was leaving work, seeing the spark still alive in her bright eyes had given him some peace of mind.

A few days ago, when a patient’s C-line came up and he volunteered to handle it, he’d caught sight of Ju A Gang’s right hand by chance.

Fingers festered with blisters and a palm marked red from repeated contact with metal rings.
And her middle finger, noticeably swollen at the first knuckle.

Whether it was foolish or stupid—did she have to let a simple band-aid situation get this infected?

It grated on him.
No, more than that: his frustration had tightened his throat.

A ballerina’s feet, a soccer player’s shins, a fighter’s ears, a violinist’s fingertips.

Tender skin chafes, then breaks, then heals, then chafes again.
Repeat that process thousands upon thousands of times, and calluses build up over it like medals of honor.

That means the skin has hardened enough never to be wounded again.
Like a tree that’s weathered every storm and finally taken root.

People often call them scars of glory,
but for those who actually endure it, the process is nothing but painful and bitter.

In four years or so, would such scars appear on Ju A Gang’s delicate hands too?

Where was her mind all day long?
Did she not even have time to apply a little ointment that lay scattered around the hospital to her own hands?

Every night in the early hours,
he’d reached for the on-call room door handle to pass her ointment, then withdrawn more than once.

More than once, he’d turned back, caught by some inexplicable, subtle feeling.

At least he’d managed to give it to her now. That would have to be enough.

Ever since hearing that Ju A Gang would be dispatched to the Trauma Center, his heart had never been at peace.

The Trauma Center was a place even the veterans who’d rolled through the hospital for five years already would shake their heads at and flee from.
Why send a first-year intern there?

There must be some scheming on the part of that opaque hospital director.
The intent was clearly not above board.

“Oh, that’s right, Professor Ma! I heard the broadcasting station is coming to film at our hospital next month?”
“Film? What kind of filming?”
“Professor Choi Hun from Korea University recently treated that Nigerian pirate ship shooting victim, right? The Trauma Center went viral.”
“Hmm, it is quite the issue.”
“This time they’re doing national promotion with a reality documentary. What was the title again? ‘Romance, Medical Drama’?”
“What? Why such a title? Where’s the romance in our bleak Trauma Center?”
“Right? My guess is it’s connected to the filming because Ju A Gang is being dispatched to our department.”

The moment Tae Heon heard the conversation between Eun Do and Professor Ma, an ominous premonition flashed through his mind.

What in the world was the hospital doing, filming a reality show?

Once the broadcasting station swept through a hospital, the inconvenience to be endured was considerable.

Reckless interviews and filming were nothing short of poison to the patients and medical staff who needed to focus on treatment.

That’s why he’d flatly refused even interviews despite the persistent requests of the PR team and the hospital director.

They always spouted plausible reasons—the Trauma Center’s chronic deficits, the need to attract investment, reshaping the hospital’s image—but he knew better than anyone the hospital director’s dark greed for personal gain.

That’s why he had no intention whatsoever of bending his principles.

And now, to learn that this filming was connected to Ju A Gang…
He couldn’t stand by and watch a first-year newcomer, standing at the edge of a cliff about to be thrown as bait to the broadcasting sharks.

It was to prevent this reckless personnel decision that he’d approached the hospital director with the pretense of not knowing while feigning indifference.

Just here.
This much goodwill he could extend. To Ju A Gang.

***

“How is your father doing?”

Afternoon sunlight streamed diagonally through the windows of the Hospital Director’s office.
The hospital director, who had been carefully wiping an orchid leaf, approached Tae Heon with a chuckle.

“I saw the news! Your father is putting all his energy into the Seoul Bridge construction project bid, I hear? Didn’t he go head-to-head with One L and Tae San? The sound of the stock price rising reached my office!”
“…….”
“Your father must be thrilled.”
“He shows great interest.”
“As for me, well. My interest is always in our hospital!”

The hospital director gave a light wave to the secretary who entered carrying two cups of tea.
Once the secretary left, he pulled a high-end wooden box on the desk toward himself and opened it, gesturing to Tae Heon.

A meticulously crafted Golden Eagle, small enough to fit in a palm, sat perfectly centered in the box.

“The Arab Prince left this a while back to thank us for treating him. What did I do to deserve it?”

The hospital director laughed loudly as if carefree, but his eyes gleamed with desire in a manner most ugly.

“I’m trying to draw some Middle Eastern money to our hospital. Foreign patient recruitment! That’s where the real money is!”

The hospital director stroked the Golden Eagle with his toad-like hand as if it were his own child, caressing it tenderly.

“You know Ju A Gang, right? That girl who caused quite a stir with the proposal video?”
“…….”
“She’s so pretty she could rival celebrities—word of mouth about her is everywhere. I heard she even had a stalker? That’s why she ran to our hospital to escape.”
“…….”
“I’m thinking of grooming her properly as the face of Se In University.”

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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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