TIME AFTER TIME ; jjk

1

Chapter 1

𝐽𝐸𝑂𝑁 𝐽𝑈𝑁𝐺𝐾𝑂𝑂𝐾

I could almost hear my own heartbeat and my mouth was dry as I walked out of the on-call room, feeling groggy. This week had been too much to handle. I usually got three hours of sleep a day, four or five if we were lucky. There wasn't much of a choice. It was either I'd go to work, or have no work at all. The first one was better. Everything had left me clinging to coffee lately because it kept me awake, and at least, sane to function for my duty.

I massaged the back of my neck, smiling at the interns and co-residents that I saw in the hallways.

I just want to go home!

But who was I kidding? My 48-hour shift wasn't yet over, and I had an intuition that my attending had always been galled with me. I didn't even know if I did anything wrong during the ward rounds this morning. Something in his glares told me that he was mad about the fact that almost everyone in the orthopedic surgery department seemed to like me. Oftentimes, he would call me pretty boy in front of people which I took with the implication that I could not be trusted with anything else except my looks. I was more than my face and I always tried to prove my skills. He had always been like that towards me since the first year of my residency. I learned how to ignore it, but there were times I just wanted to yell back at Dr. Won whenever he took out his stress on me. He didn't have the right to make me feel bad about myself just because he was my boss and I was on his team. Ah, it makes me so mad, but I knew I couldn't do anything.

I was surprised when I turned a corner and Taehyung sauntered past me, tapping my back before he strode away. He was wearing his white coat, scrubs underneath the layer. Why is he looking so good even in the morning? Self-consciously, I raked my hand through my damp hair and purposefully messed it so it would look naturally disheveled. I had to look good, if not best. Of course, I wouldn't look in my best right now considering I barely got any sleep.

"Doctor Jeon, good morning." I knew that voice. Very well. I could even hear more of that playing in my head, in a sexy, disgusting way, oh my God.

Forcing myself to smile, I turned around and watched Doctor Nam go over to me with a nice beam on her face, her heels clacking against the floor. I would never be able to look at her the same way as before. All I could think was nudes, nudes, nudes.

I pushed the thought away.

A sudden wave of agitation came flooding in when I remembered how it all started. It was all Kim Taehyung's fault! That idiot. If he hadn't been adamant on giving away my phone number as if he owned it, I wouldn't have been changing it every now and then. Different people used to phone me for no important reason, and would even send me inappropriate pictures which had usually pissed me off because it none of those was what I needed after long hours of hospital duty. I wasn't yet desperate for fun and harmless flirting although I could use one. Sometimes I wondered if I was a call boy on the side—no offense to the ones who worked that way for money.

I could recall one time, someone pretended to be a dealer of some beauty products, and even proposed to meet them so I could see myself. In hindsight, it was ridiculous.

"So... would you like to eat breakfast with me?"

I raised my brows uncomfortably. "I would love to, but my Dad is waiting for me at the cafeteria." I wasn't lying. I hadn't met one of my parents this week since I couldn't leave the hospital, that's why my father decided to visit me instead. Thankfully it was today, or else I wouldn't have any valid reason to decline to her.