Boss, It's My First Time Being Your Resident - Chapter 66
—————
This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
—————
Episode 66. Fata viam invenient
Ha Tae-heon’s hands moved without hesitation.
The remaining buttons—those her trembling fingers had been unable to undo—came free so easily in his hands.
In just a few gestures, the blouse fell open across her shoulders and slipped down lightly.
A-gang’s pupils dilated sharply.
“S-Senior…”
As if to hide her own unfamiliar nakedness, A-gang wrapped her arms around his neck and pulled him closer.
It wasn’t the first time she’d shown him her bare skin.
But this was a different warmth than that night on Cheongwhasan, when they’d relied only on the dim glow of candlelight—and A-gang found herself breathless.
Ha Tae-heon, seeming to understand all of her distress, let his gaze drift slowly from her slender neck past her delicate shoulders to the generous curve of her breast, then tilted his head and kissed it gently.
“Ah—”
The sudden touch startled a short gasp from A-gang’s lips.
The moment his warm breath touched that place—a place no one but him had ever touched—every hair on her body stood on end.
Without lifting his lips, Ha Tae-heon pulled back slightly, then drew her trembling waist tightly toward him.
“Mmm.”
The soft flesh was gently taken into his mouth. A slender whimper escaped from between A-gang’s lips.
Her hands gripping the edge of the sink trembled as an unfamiliar, intimate sensation rolled carefully across her tender skin.
She tried desperately to compose herself, but her mind had gone white as fog.
Ha Tae-heon covered her small, restless hands—clenching and opening, fidgeting—with his own.
“S-Senior!”
A-gang drew breath sharply and opened her mouth.
“W-Wait, just a moment, please.”
At her urgent call, Ha Tae-heon drew back slowly.
“You’re startled by this, but where did that nerve go—the one that made you bring condoms from the hospital?”
Ha Tae-heon spoke softly, his gaze fixed on her trembling eyes.
“I’ve held back. So much.”
“…”
“Not for a single moment have I not felt like a beast.”
Only now did Ha Tae-heon feel as though he were being honest with himself.
Every time he met her glossy, full lips, he had to seize his reason to keep from casting everything aside, regardless of where they were.
And whenever her slender yet shapely silhouette entered his sight, he had to endure and master the heat that flared through him moment by moment.
“You have no idea how desperately I’m holding back right now.”
Ha Tae-heon buried his face in her neck.
His voice, low and restrained, burrowed into her ear.
“Is it right that someone like me has you?”
“What kind of person is someone like you, Senior?”
A-gang asked carefully, strangely troubled by the warmth that had settled on her shoulder.
“Dirtier than you could ever imagine.”
Ha Tae-heon let out a self-mocking laugh.
“Don’t ever meet Ha Tae-heon, A-gang.”
“…What?”
“You two don’t suit each other.”
Yesterday at dawn.
Woo Seop, having finally crossed the line, had come all the way to the on-call room to hurl those words at her.
As if he’d already completed his background check on Ha Tae-heon, Woo Seop’s chilling revelations had struck A-gang’s chest like daggers with each word.
“Do you know who Ha Tae-heon’s father is? The notorious Chairman Ha. The living demon of the back alleys, the ruthless mobster Ha Yong-seon!”
“…”
“Chairman Ha is called the Second Emperor in that world. Know why? Because just as that ancient tyrant built the Great Wall upon the deaths of tens of thousands, Chairman Ha built the Taesan Group today upon the blood and tears of countless people. You and he are fundamentally different from the start.”
Woo Seop’s expression was one of unshakeable certainty that Ha Tae-heon’s very existence was a harm to A-gang.
Beyond Woo Seop’s confident voice, A-gang could vividly picture all the sharp prejudices Ha Tae-heon had endured.
Even the bitter smile he’d worn when he spoke of walking the path of medicine to settle his karmic debt…
“…Woo Seop. Stop.”
A-gang cut off Woo Seop’s suffocating revelations with a trembling voice.
“Whoever his father is, he isn’t. Woo Seop. He’s different.”
“He’s not different. Parents and children are one body. That cruel blood—where would it go? The roots are all the same.”
“No. Ha Tae-heon is someone who saves people, not someone who kills them. That’s what I believe.”
“Break up with him. For your own sake!”
“…”
“This isn’t just my duty to protect you—this is what I’m saying to you as a friend who’s stood by your side for ten years.”
“Woo Seop. You know one thing and miss the other.”
Even knowing the weight of Woo Seop’s barbed warning, A-gang had never once doubted Ha Tae-heon.
The sight of him devoting all his heart to saving patients couldn’t possibly be a lie.
And his sincerity had imprinted itself so deeply in her heart that nothing could deny it.
“Chairman Ha… Senior’s father.”
A-gang’s heart ached with pity for the weight Ha Tae-heon must have carried alone all this time.
“The Taesan Group, Senior’s father’s company.”
“…”
“Senior, when you said you wanted to settle your karmic debt… I think I understand now what you meant.”
A-gang looked up at Ha Tae-heon with sorrow flickering in her eyes.
“Someone with your kind of heart, hiding behind the vast infamy of Taesan… How much you must have torn yourself apart, how tattered your spirit must have become inside.”
With each button she released, painful scars etched across his solid chest came into view beneath the light.
“I wanted to save you. Even if my heart stopped, I wanted to save you…”
His words circled endlessly through her mind.
The burn scars scattered across his chest that she’d seen on Cheongwhasan, raising questions.
And the tattoo that followed his ribs from his side to his left chest as if to conceal that wound, winding in messy lines.
According to what her parents had told her—
There had been a boy who came running to the bathroom when her brother was electrocuted.
Despite knowing full well that touching an electrocuted person would endanger him too, he’d thrown himself into it without hesitation, and because of the current that touched his chest, he’d suffered severe electrical burns himself.
It was him.
That boy.
Ha Tae-heon, standing before her now.
As A-gang slowly drew his shirt open, his upper body was finally revealed beneath the light.
The deepest, most painful scar hidden in the depths of his body.
“Fata viam invenient.”
A-gang’s trembling fingertips traced slowly across the words engraved near his ribs.
She recognized this phrase.
Something her brother used to say from time to time, like a verbal habit.
Was it a brand he’d marked upon himself, or had he carved it in to never forget the karmic debt he’d bear his whole life?
“Fate will find a way. That’s… that’s something Ju Jun-won said, isn’t it?”
A-gang’s lower jaw trembled.
“…Ju Jun-won?”
“My brother.”
“…”
A long silence fell.
A-gang wiped away her tears and laughed softly, as if it were nothing.
“You’re so sharp and keen when you see patients, Senior. How could you not have realized until now that I’m Ju Jun-won’s sister?”
“…”
“My brother and I don’t look alike at all, I guess. Still, I’m glad you recognized me first.”
Ha Tae-heon tilted up A-gang’s chin.
Then, as if bewitched, he reached out and gently brushed the tip of her reddened nose with his index finger.
“…Jun-won mentioned once. That his sister’s nose turns red like a cat’s when she cries, and he found that so cute.”
His warm finger traced tenderly across the flushed tip of her nose.
“You just realized that now?”
A-gang gazed into Ha Tae-heon’s eyes and cradled both his cheeks in her hands.
Beyond the deep shadow that lay across his pupils, she felt as though she were meeting that young boy from fifteen years ago.
Now it was her turn to draw out the thorn lodged so deep in his heart.
“Senior… I know who you are. No matter what anyone else says, even if the world points at you as the son of a ruthless mobster, that can’t taint what you truly are.”
“…”
“The only person who was there for my brother in his final moment.”
A-gang spoke quietly, slowly tracing his marred scars.
“The person who reached out without hesitation, even facing the possibility of your own death.”
“…”
“The person who held my brother until the very end, even as your own chest burned away without a single unblemished place remaining.”
Ha Tae-heon’s pupils shimmered like a tidal wave.
—————
This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
—————