“Love Me.”

Seongmin always found hospitals interesting. They were battlefields between health and illness, life and death. Their corridors and waiting rooms were filled with worry, yet beneath that worry was nothing else but true love. Each time Seongmin spoke with a patient’s family or friends, he’d notice the concern, care, and hope in their eyes.

He wanted to become a doctor faster, so he could actually help the sick and not just watch others do it. So far, he hadn’t even become a general practitioner yet. He was a medical student in his third year, currently doing an internship in the hospital next to his university. He studied in Seoul.

Surprisingly, at night there were many fewer patients than he expected. His classmates went to other offices and would switch with him later, following a rotational order. It was 11:00 p.m., and there was one more hour until Seongmin could go home. He was tired and dying from boredom. He was assigned to Dr. Pak—an introverted surgeon, who would never say anything apart from what was absolutely necessary. Seongmin had seen him during three different shifts, and he looked half asleep on every single one, even after Seongmin brought him coffee.

Not knowing what to do in the silent and empty office, Seongmin got up to wash his glasses. Scrutinizing books in dim light ruined his sight when he was a teen, forcing him to accept the glasses as a necessity. He hated them until he read somewhere that glasses added an air of sexiness. He didn’t feel sexy at all, so he automatically felt more confident with his glasses. They made him start liking his eyes, which were an outer-space shade of black.

He returned to Dr. Pak’s office and sat in his chair, ready to watch an old episode of House, M. D. on his phone. He never got bored of this TV series. He loved it nearly as much as Grey’s Anatomy, which had made him want to pursue a medical degree. Yet just after the episode started, someone knocked at the door and shyly pushed it ajar.

“Come in!” Seongmin felt relieved that something interesting was happening at last.

The patient turned out to be a man around thirty. Seongmin cast a calm, cool glance at him.

He was tall and definitely heavier than Seongmin, but that wasn’t surprising; Seongmin was one of those young South Korean men who kept their boyish charm, even into their not-so-early twenties. The man was wearing rather fancy clothes—an eclectic blue jacket, white chinos, and matching suede brogues with blue rubber soles. Buddhist prayer beads were tied around his left wrist.

Seongmin looked at the man’s face, wondering about the reason for his attire. Maybe he was the birthday boy or had just attended a friend’s bachelor party? Both options made sense. The man’s eyebrow was bleeding; it didn’t look serious but had to be stitched.

Even with that quirky sense of style and the blood staining his face, the man was attractive. No, not just attractive. Beautiful in a mature and manly way. He had symmetrical features and short black hair with a cropped quiff. When he looked at the young intern, Seongmin felt his cheeks blush. He didn’t want to stare, but he couldn’t peel his eyes away.

“Are you Dr. Pak?” asked the stranger. His voice was low, deep, and sweet, a bit like a big cat’s murmur. When Seongmin heard it, he felt chaos in his chest.

“N-no,” he responded and noticed that his heart was beating differently than usual. He tried to calm down and blamed it on his anxiety. It always happened in stressful situations. “I’m here on internship. Dr. Pak is in the other room. I’ll interview you and then send you to him.”

“Okay,” the stranger smiled.

“What’s your name?” Seongmin shyly showed him the chair.

“Choe Jiseon.”

Seongmin quickly found his name in the system.

“What happened to you?” he inquired.

“I tripped,” said Jiseon.

“Tripped? Where?” Seongmin found it hard to control his curiosity.

“I think you don't want to know.” Jiseon laughed.

It was the sexiest laugh that Seongmin has ever heard. In no time, his heart was racing again, and his neck was covered with cold sweat. What the hell’s going on? he thought. I never get this anxious when I’m interviewing patients…

But on the other hand, Jiseon was the most intriguing patient that Seongmin had ever had.

He made him sit on the office’s bed, which was covered with a disposable sheet, and he put on light blue latex gloves. He moistened a gauze pad with disinfectant.

“Please don’t move,” he said. When he lifted his hand to Jiseon’s forehead, he saw it was trembling. He quickly pressed it to Jiseon’s eyebrow to clean the blood. Jiseon’s eyes were fixed on his chest, and for a moment Seongmin feared that Jiseon might somehow be able to hear his heart, or worse, see it beating through his shirt. “So, where did you trip?” he asked to divert his attention.

“In a gay bar.”

Oh my God,thought Seongmin. He took the gauze away and put it on the tray. Such a handsome man and also gay. So ideals exist after all.

He got another pad and continued to clean Jiseon’s face. It took him just a few moments to assess that if he could wake up every morning next to this guy, it would be the most amazing thing ever.

Then his imagination raced years forward. He saw himself walking hand in hand with Jiseon, next to the Han river, taking a break during a hike on the Jirisan Mountain.

He felt a desperate desire to tell him that he was gay as well, or at least get the man’s phone number, using a stupid pretense of surveying the patients who had talked to interns. Even though Jiseon’s face was clean already, Seongmin kept touching it with the gauze.

“Is the wound still bleeding?”

“Just a bit. I’m almost done,” Seongmin reassured him, cursing himself in his mind. He either had to let the man go or tell him.