Boss, It's My First Time Being Your Resident - Chapter 4

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

Chapter 4. Am I to your taste?

Did I hear that wrong?

A Gang, startled, crossed both hands over her shoulders and fixed him with a serious expression.

Her lips were growing pale, pressed tightly shut.

“Take them off. If you don’t want to freeze to death.”
“I’m sorry? Take what off?”
“What are you imagining?”

Tae Heon furrowed his brow.

“Spend the night in wet clothes like that and you’ll develop Hypothermia.”
“…….”
“It’s basic knowledge, that much at least.”

Tae Heon added the remark matter-of-factly, then turned his back.
He could easily picture the woman standing there in silence, hesitant and uncertain.

What? The Onell Group?

Tae Heon laughed, incredulous.

An Alaskan? Khakassian DNA?

At the remark about a bone structure rare to see in Korea, a snort escaped him unbidden.

Whether she was free of prejudice or simply thoughtless, he couldn’t say.

She was a woman given to saying the strangest things. And yet those strange words kept turning over in his mind.

“I’m wearing something now.”

He gathered the green Blanket scattered in the corner, folded it into one piece, and draped it over the table—and the Blanket slipped into the woman’s hands.

“You can turn around now.”

Some time later, the woman’s voice came to him, small and distant.

Tae Heon turned back in one quick motion.

The woman pulled the Blanket awkwardly up to her chin, gripping it tightly with both hands, her lips pressed together.

His gaze, of its own accord, followed the faint curve of her shoulders beneath the Blanket’s edge and came to rest on the white socks covering her ankles.

She had slender, pale ankles—the rounded prominence of her ankle bones delicate and fragile.

How she’d managed to climb that treacherous mountain path on such fragile ankles was beyond him.
The memory of her light, graceful gait made him let out an involuntary laugh.

Tae Heon shook the moisture from his own Coat and draped it over her shoulders.

“Take off your socks too. They’re soaked through.”
“Ah, yes… yes?”

An awkward silence fell between them.

It wasn’t as though he’d asked her to do anything scandalous—just remove wet socks. Yet her shoulders flinched as if he’d said something improper.

This unnecessary… stillness.

A breath escaped him.
Tae Heon ran a hand through his hair, a habit. The short, bristly ends scraped against his palm.

Only then did he remember that he’d cut his hair short recently.

Since entering the trauma center as a Fellow, it had become second nature to cut his hair as short as possible in one session, making the most of the time.

Even those few minutes spent on grooming felt like a luxury he couldn’t afford.

But now…
He was a man of leisure, clearly.

Her eyes met his in the empty air as she studied him intently.

“What are you doing? Aren’t you going to remove them?”
“Remove what?”
“Those wet socks.”
“Oh! Yes!”

This was strange.

His request to remove her socks was hardly some forbidden switch, yet she kept startling and flinching at the words.

The more he watched, the more amusing the woman became.

“Why? Afraid I might do something improper?”
“No, no, it’s not that…”

The woman answered quietly.

It wasn’t as though they were undressing each other in a hotel room—yet somehow the atmosphere had taken on an odd, charged quality.

She was a woman who drew the eye more than was necessary.

Each small movement of her body unfolded in what felt like slow motion.

He watched as she held the Blanket’s edge firmly with one hand while carefully drawing off the socks with the other.

How could bare feet resting atop Athletic Shoes be so beautiful?

There were hands and feet like that sometimes.
Supple and soft, as if they possessed no joints at all.

So tender they’d bruise if held too firmly—pale, delicate, bare hands and feet.

Her ankles were concave on either side of the Achilles tendon, almost excessively graceful. Unnecessarily so.

His gaze lingered where it shouldn’t, and Tae Heon found himself caught off guard, clearing his throat awkwardly.

“Let me see your hand. It looked injured earlier.”

He withdrew a Handkerchief from his pocket and folded it lengthwise; the woman cautiously extended her hand.

Her fingertips were ice-cold.

“Why do you wear a broken Watch?”
“Hm? When did it stop? I’ll have to get it fixed when I come down tomorrow.”
“You should see a hospital first. This will take a while to heal. If you work with your hands, that’s unfortunate.”
“I do work with my hands. It’s… cold.”

As Tae Heon wound the Handkerchief once, twice around her injured hand, he continued speaking softly.

“A snare tightens more if you pull it in the forward direction. That’s how it’s designed.”
“That’s cruel.”
“To release a snare, you first wedge something into the opening, then turn the loop in the opposite direction of the tightening, like this—snap.”
“That hurts! Gently!”

He demonstrated by slightly twisting the knot, and the woman let out a short cry.

“Use a knife or multitool if you can. Trying to pull with bare hands is foolish.”
“… But how do you know all this?”
“I’ve done it a few times in the line of work.”
“In the line of work?”

Though he could read the question in her eyes—when would she ever have to remove a snare again in her life?—the woman nodded earnestly as if she understood.

A harsh wind whistled past their ears.

The decrepit wooden window frame of the Shelter couldn’t block out the cutting wind that wormed its way through every gap.

The woman rubbed her hands together, breathing warm air into them urgently.

“Are you that cold?”
“I think I’m running a slight fever…”
“Rolling around in the snow on a day this cold—who does that? You’re not a child.”
“I just felt like it. It was thrilling. First time coming alone to a place like this.”
“First time? Climbing a mountain?”
“Yes.”

The woman pulled her lips up awkwardly, her mouth already pale, and gripped the Blanket tightly.

“I keep getting drowsy…”
“Drowsy?”

At her words, Tae Heon withdrew the hand he’d been about to reach toward her forehead.

“Well, whether you freeze to death or not is hardly my concern,”

It went without saying that drowsiness was the first sign of Hypothermia.
The most common, and most dangerous, warning symptom.

Soon her core temperature would drop below 35 degrees, and she’d begin to lose consciousness.

“But if you die here with me, that becomes my headache.”

Tae Heon studied her thoughtfully, furrowing his brow for a moment.

“You choose. Option one: you make it until morning as is. Option two: Body Heat Sharing.”
“…What did you say? Body heat… what?”

Tae Heon glanced around, then nodded toward the small bunk with wooden walls enclosing three sides.

Then, without a trace of self-consciousness, he began to undo his shirt buttons one by one.

“Let’s avoid any unnecessary misunderstandings between us.”

***

Body Heat Sharing…

A Gang was so flustered that nonsense nearly escaped her lips.

But faced with the man’s abrupt proposal, she could only nod her acceptance.

The Shelter in February was colder than she’d imagined.

Thanks to her grandfather’s thorough silencing of the press, her name had never been made public, but an article about dying from exposure on a mountain—that he couldn’t suppress.

[Onell Group Heiress Ju A Gang, Shocking Death, Found as Corpse on Mountain.]

At the thought of such sensational headlines plastered across the front page, a chill ran down her spine.

“Why would a chaebol daughter want to be a doctor? All this time she was just playing hospital as a hobby, wasn’t she?”

She could see it vividly—the reactions, the whispers.

The words she least wanted to hear, now and forever.

Because the name Ju A Gang always came first with the modifier “chaebol heiress”—no matter what she did or didn’t do.

A secret she’d hidden even from her peers and seniors—she couldn’t let her final chapter be written that way.

After hesitating for a long while, A Gang slowly crawled onto the bunk.

The man undid his shirt buttons one by one, his face impassive as he regarded her steadily.

She leaned against the wall with her knees drawn up, studying his form with unwavering eyes.
With an appearance of perfect indifference.

Was it the flickering candlelight?

The sight of the man removing his shirt felt surreal, like a scene from a film.

His pale skin, so at odds with his dark hair, deepened the cool beauty of his features.

His torso was flawless.
Broad shoulders, musculature that could have come from an anatomy textbook, yet…

Her gaze halted on the man’s lateral abdomen.

Scattered burn scars and wounds of unknown origin.

And a black tattoo running chaotically along the left side of his chest, following the path of his twelfth rib—as if concealing those scars beneath it.

His torso was too striking to regard without prejudice, and yet too delicate.

Faced with this inexplicable sense of pressure, A Gang found herself unconsciously hugging her knees tighter.

Could she not hide the tremor in her eyes?

He spoke.

“First time seeing a man undress?”
“…….”

She’d seen male patients, but never a man taking off his clothes this close to her before…

Yet A Gang straightened her face and answered with perfect composure.

“First time? This is my daily routine!”
“Daily routine?”

Tae Heon let out a soft laugh.

Am I to your taste, then?”

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