Chapter Text
If God made people by mixing up a bunch of ingredients, what would you be made of? Well, let me tell you what Yoo Kihyun is made of.
A heaping of smarts, Kihyun is a straight As final year medical student.
A good helping of good looks, despite his petite size his pale skin, adorable monolids, and adorable button nose had men and women gawking at him for hours.
And a whole sack of awkward cluelessness. Kihyun grew up with little to no friends. He was a shy kid, introverted by nature he found it difficult to speak to other kids, and his beauty kept other kids from approaching him. At first, people were creeped out by how perfect he looked, but in the later years people were just intimidated by his good looks and lack of verbal expression (stemming from his chronic shyness), and of course his almost god-tier intelligence. As a result, Kihyun grew up without much experience with social interactions, and he is pretty terrible in any social situation. When he went on class trips he would typically keep to himself at the back of the class, when he did group projects he would usually finish everything on his own within the first day the assignment was given, when he tried going to parties he found himself pushed out the front door by his rowdy peers who didn’t even notice he was there.
Kihyun was fine with it, sure he was a little sad at first, but he found the tranquility of solitude comforting. Slowly he retracted comfortably into his own shell, enjoying being an observer of others’ growing up while he went about it his own way, at his own pace. The consequence of that lifestyle is that he was hopelessly oblivious to social cues, or red flags, something that will become pretty important in this little story.
The most important thing about Kihyun, however, is that he had an unwaveringly kind and compassionate heart. Despite having no friends, he always helped his peers who approached him with questions about schoolwork, and he readily lent his notes when people asked for them. Of course, he didn’t realize that these kids were mostly just trying to leach off the smartest kid in the room, but innocent little Kihyun just enjoyed being able to help others. This naturally led him on the path to becoming a doctor, he wanted to help people, to make them feel better, another thing that will become pretty important in this little story.
So let’s get on to this little story.
It was a rainy Friday night, and Kihyun was on his way home from an exhausting 16 hours shift at the university hospital. Final year medical student life wasn’t fun, and being on his feet, taking notes, attending to patients, fueled on a couple of kimbaps, granola bars, and countless cups of black coffee was only going to sustain his body that much. Needless to say, he was exhausted and ready to knock out on his bed, and be temporarily dead to the world until he had to wake up for his classes again. He clutches his coat a little closer and holds onto his umbrella a little tighter to fight off the bitter cold that came with this rainy night. He turns into his usual slip road, a quick short cut he discovered that led straight to the backdoor of his apartment building, it shaved 10 minutes off his commute, a convenience he would gladly take advantage of now.
Kihyun was about 2 minutes away from the door that would bring him back home when he heard a loud clang to his right. Shocked, his eyes widen, and he twists his neck to face the source of the noise. Before his eyes was a dark alleyway, lined with green dumpsters, and lit by the soft glow of fire exit lights. Kihyun didn’t particularly like walking this shortcut at night, the neighborhood he lived in was known to be a little shady, with rumors of gang violence and other illegal activities but it was close to school, the hospital, and the rent was cheap. Still, he was too tired tonight to really care about the supposed dangers that lurked these streets, besides he’d been here for about two years now, he didn’t hear about any murders, rapes, or robberies, those rumors were probably just some baseless gossip he would rationalize to himself. As Kihyun stares into the abyss of the alley he tries to make out what made that noise. He stares on taking shallow breaths, but there was nothing. Letting out a small sigh, Kihyun gets ready to take the remaining steps to his destination. But the moment his right foot touched the ground in his first step he hears a loud groan. He freezes.
A new wave of fear creeps up his spine, as his eyes return to the dark alleyway. Something was in there, and the irrational part of Kihyun’s brain thought he was somehow triggering it. His breath hitches when he hears another groan, a somewhat familiar sound. The gears in his brains crank and work until he registers why that sound was familiar, it was the sound of someone in pain, it was a sound he was all too familiar with. Kihyun’s pupils dilate at the thought of someone being hurt somewhere in that alleyway. His fear melted into concern. When he hears another groan, his body started to move instinctively. With trembling knees, he entered the terrifying alleyway.
Clutching onto his umbrella to anchor his nerves he walks deeper in, following the groans which had become softer but more frequent. As his eyes adjust to the light he makes out a limp pair of legs sticking out behind the second dumpster, the sounds must have been coming from him. With growing urgency and panic Kihyun hurries over to the body. When he was a few steps away he stopped, a renewed fear paralyzing him. His brain was yelling “this is a bad idea, this is a bad bad bad idea”, but his heart screamed, “someone’s hurt you need to help him!!”. Struggling with this dilemma, Kihyun decides to cautiously peek over the dumpster to look at the body behind the dumpster.
He sees a man. Clad in all black, mostly in leather, with holes at his right shoulder and left thigh. Bullet wounds. This was when Kihyun’s brain lost the argument with his heart. Going into his doctor mode (even though he wasn’t a full doctor yet), Kihyun steps up and crouches beside the man behind the dumpster. The man in black shifts a little and his eyes shoot open in shock at the sudden arrival of Kihyun by his side, he attempts to stand up, struggling to move his body to get away.
Kihyun places a calming hand on the man’s forearm and says in a voice he reserved for his patients, “It’s okay, I can help you. You look really hurt do you need help? Do you need me to call the ambulance?”
The man grunt as he shakes Kihyun’s hands off, “Fuck off –” his sentence of cut off by a sharp pain that shoots through his wounds and the man bites down on his lip to stifle his groan in pain.
“No no no don’t move, let me at least look at the wound.” Kihyun reaches out to the injured shoulder close to him and reaches out to assess the injury but the man once again swats his hands away.
“Fuck off—AHH!” another lightning strike of pain runs down the man’s body. Despite this he glares at Kihyun with almost animalistic aggression, hoping to intimidate him into leaving.
Kihyun sits there unfazed, choosing to not look at the man’s eyes focusing on the wound before him. “It’s fresh and the bullet is still embedded. Mister, you need to get to a hospital right now—” Kihyun looks up at the main with sincere urgency when he realizes that the eyes that looked at him were no longer marked by aggression but rather were becoming increasingly out of focus. Color was slipping out of the man’s face and Kihyun panics, “Shit, you’re losing too much blood. Shit shit urgh.”
In a haze, Kihyun hooks his umbrella onto his arm and tries to drag the man further away from the dumpster, trying to avoid aggravating the wounds any further. The man was heavy, and he tries to struggle out of Kihyun’s hold though he was losing strength by the minute, fatigue taking over. “Mister, I know you don’t want people to help you right now, but if I leave you here you are going to die. Can you try to get up, my apartment is 2 minutes away.”
Giving up the struggle, the man stops his futile resistance and slowly gets to his feet with Kihyun’s help. Grunting in pain every time he moved, he leaned onto Kihyun who was supporting his left side. The man tries to take a step forward but nearly collapses from the pain. Kihyun strains under the weight of the man as he tries to haul him back onto his feet, “Just a little bit, Mister. Just a little bit.”
With Kihyun’s constant encouragement and nothing short of a miracle, the small medical student was able to haul the man in black into his little studio apartment. Kihyun shuddered a little as the man’s muddy leather boots trudged onto his perfect wooden floor, but his sense of duty pushed that momentary reaction of disgust into the back of his mind. Carefully, Kihyun sets the man down onto his couch and he rushes to locate the first aid kit he kept in his bathroom.
When he returns to the man, he sees a look of panic on the injured man’s face. Kihyun kneels beside the hyperventilating man, placing a warm hand over his chest and soothes, “Sshhhhhh, shhhhh it’s okay it’s okay. You’re safe.” The man’s breath levels as he turns to face Kihyun. The medical student lets out a gentle smile and proceeds to dive into the first aid kit retrieving the tools he needed. He takes out a pair of bandage scissors which leads to the man on the couch taking a sharp inhale.
“What the fuck are you planning to do?” he grunts out defensively.
“I need to cut your clothes to remove the bullet. I’m not a doctor yet but I am a medical student, I haven’t exactly taken bullets out before, but I’ve done a couple of splinters. Either way, I need to remove the bullet to bandage the wound and stop the bleeding,” Kihyun kindly explains as he proceeds to cut through the man’s soaked black turtleneck.
Realizing that Kihyun was not going to stop anytime soon and overwhelmed by waves of pain shooting through his body the man leans back placing his left hand over his eyes trying to stifle his moans in pain.
Once the cloth was out of the way, Kihyun took out a pair of forceps, spritzing it with a disinfectant spray, he readied himself to remove the bullet. He hands a small hand towel over to the man, “It’s going to hurt, so I suggest you bite on this.”
“What the—” the man tries to protest but Kihyun proceeds to shove the towel in his face.
“I’m serious, bite on it,” he commands. The man begrudgingly obliges, wrapping his teeth around the soft towel. “Okay, I’m going in,” that was Kihyun’s warning before he carefully sticks the forceps into the open wound to locate the bullet.
Instinctively the man bites down in pain, and he nearly reaches out to push Kihyun off, but the rational side of his sanity stilled his hand, instead focusing on digging his teeth deep into the towel Kihyun provided.
Holding his breath in concentration, ignoring the spurts of blood that came out of the wound, Kihyun squinted to look for the bullet. When he felt the forceps clink against a metal object, he knew he found it. It was deep, probably damaging muscle and tendons with it, but from what he could tell it didn’t reach any bones, which was a good sign. With a firm grip and a prayer, Kihyun carefully extracts the bullet. The man on his couch squirms and writhes in pain, but Kihyun is unfazed. Once the bullet from the shoulder is removed, Kihyun proceeds to assess the thigh injury. Same thing, it was a bullet wound, and the foreign object was still embedded, albeit it wasn’t as deep as the shoulder one. Using the scissors, he cuts through the thick leather pants and gives one look at the man on his couch, now with beads of sweat dotting his forehead as he squeezed his eyes shut and clenched his jaw from the pain.
“I’m sorry, but there is another one I need to remove. Just hold on a little longer,” Kihyun whispers, and dives in to remove the bullet from the left thigh. Once again, the man writhes in pain, muscles in his legs tensing up. “You need to relax or it’s going to hurt more,” Kihyun instructs, and breaths a sigh of relief when he sees the left thigh muscle before him ease back into the couch. The bullet was much easier to find this time, with a swift movement, Kihyun removes the second bullet and sets it on a tissue on his coffee table. He wipes the beads of tensions from his forehead and proceeds to bandage the wounds to prevent further blood loss. He works meticulously, swiftly, and accurately, evidence of him being the top student in his class.
By the time Kihyun was done, his hands were covered in blood, his shirt was stained with it, his couched was splattered with it, but he was done. Leaning on his coffee table and finally sitting down, Kihyun takes deep breaths processing what he had just done. He looks in disbelief at the leather-clad man sprawled on his couch, his night-black outfit broken up only by the white bandages Kihyun had dressed. The hand towel had slipped out of the man’s mouth onto the floor, and he was making eye contact with Kihyun with an almost drunken look.
The almost doctor sighs, accepting his reality and scoots a little closer to his “patient”. “You lost a lot of blood, but I’ve removed the bullets and bandaged the wounds. You must be feeling really tired right now. Don’t worry about anything, just get some rest.”
The man nods weakly as he lets his eyelids droop further, taking him away into a deep sleep. Kihyun looks on, for a split second he thinks the burly man looks kinda cute, but he quickly shakes that thought away blaming it on his own fatigue. With his aching limbs, he briefly cleans up the scene, packs the first aid kit, and proceeds to get ready for his slumber. Kihyun returns the first aid kit to where it belongs, he takes a long hot shower and collapses into his bed. A part of him thinks all of this was just a dream, that did not he just removed a bullet in a very unsanitary environment, but his gut knew this was all too real. For now, however, it doesn’t matter, snoozeland was calling, and Kihyun very readily answered it sinking into a slumber of his own.