Chapter – 14
“I’m sorry about earlier. Ah, my stomach hurt so bad I thought I was going to die, so I got sensitive. Haha.”
“Ah… yes.”
The man apologized in a friendly, easygoing way and treated Cheonga warmly.
And as they walked together toward the café, it didn’t take long for her to realize why he looked so familiar.
“Wow, Nurse! It’s been so long!”
“Good afternoon, Professor. I’ll come see you later!”
He greeted every hospital staff member they passed as if he knew them all, without missing a beat. Even so, he never neglected Cheonga.
It was clear he was extremely skilled at this sort of thing.
“What would you like to drink? Hehe. I’ll pay, as an apology too. I can’t let such a pretty noona treat me. Order something expensive!”
After handing her the most expensive coffee at the hospital café, he naturally began asking questions—mostly related to his work.
Things like the preferences of the people in the exam rooms, or what snacks they often ate, information he could’ve picked up while cleaning trash in the endoscopy unit.
Then, ever so casually, he moved on to questions about lists of medications professors commonly prescribed, or whether she’d ever seen prescription records.
Exactly the kind of behavior you’d expect from a pharmaceutical sales rep.
Still, her suspicion didn’t fade.
It was an uneasiness she couldn’t quite put into words.
“I should get going now—I need to see the professor. See you next time!”
“Yes, go ahead.”
Only when Cheonga parted ways with him did she finally realize the source of her doubt.
Come to think of it, that man…
‘He doesn’t make any sound when he walks.’
A salesman—someone whose job depended on making his presence known—wouldn’t walk so silently.
Right. Now that she thought about it, that was true.
She’d been sure the restroom was empty, yet she’d jumped when she suddenly heard a voice.
‘Suspicious bastard.’
Honestly, even if the salesman really had stolen the note and returned it, it wouldn’t have been a big problem.
The Morse code itself wasn’t that important, and without knowing the prearranged cipher, the real code couldn’t be deciphered anyway.
‘This hospital is huge. And the number of suspicious people just keeps growing… sigh, what a mess.’
Cheonga stared blankly at the phone clenched tightly in her hand.
She wanted to tell Yeonhee about this, but right now it was impossible.
‘And on top of that, I’m being bugged.’
With a deep sigh, Cheonga shoved her phone into her pocket and trudged off to finish the rest of her work.
As always, after finishing her day’s work, Cheonga headed to Yushin’s lab.
The moment she weakly pushed open the door, her eyes met Min Yushin’s, who had been staring at a monitor.
“Oh…?”
Cheonga made an awkward face.
“You’re… not off work yet. I came to clean, um…”
What flashed through her mind was the Morse code message Yeonhee had sent.
‘Min Yushin. You said he’s definitely forty, right.’
Without realizing it, she spoke in polite honorifics.
The glow of the monitor reflected in Yushin’s glasses disappeared as he took them off and set them on the desk, then stood up.
“Do you always come to clean after work hours like this? I think we met pretty late a few days ago too.”
She wanted to answer as politely as possible, but the words that came out of her mouth weren’t filtered at all.
“If I clean during work hours, I’d get fired. It’s outside my job guidelines.”
Yushin frowned deeply.
“Then why did you go around volunteering to take care of the other professors’ rooms too?”
It was a question she’d fully expected.
To avoid such an aggressive question, she should’ve kept her mouth shut.
Cheonga swallowed hard, her stomach aching.
“Well, I’m the underling. Because I’m the underling. If they say jump, I jump. If they say crawl, I crawl. How can I help some people and not others? One complaint from a professor and I’m out.”
She pouted as she spoke, then squeezed her eyes shut.
Seeing Yushin’s room—once again turned into a pigsty—made her insides churn.
“And the other rooms don’t take that long to clean…”
“……”
They both awkwardly avoided each other’s gaze.
“Professor, don’t you feel sorry for me? Please, don’t mess up the room so much. Do you even read all these books? Why—why are they all piled up like this?”
“…I do. I read them all. Every day.”
Yushin offered a brief excuse.
At that, Cheonga’s hands trembled as she pointed at the desk.
“Th-then what about those papers too?”
“Well… for now, yes. I need to study.”
For some reason, Yushin looked a little embarrassed.
He smiled sheepishly and ran a hand through his hair.
That mismatched sight only made Cheonga more frustrated.
“Even so… couldn’t you at least put them away after reading them? P-please?”
At her pleading, Yushin slowly shifted his gaze, scanning the back of her neck and the patches stuck all over her wrists.
“I’ll try. For today… you should rest.”
“……”
“Come back tomorrow. A promise is a promise. If you clean until it’s spotless… that’d be great.”
Yushin walked slowly to the table in the center of the lab and picked up a promotional item. From a bag with a BuWang Pharmaceuticals sticker, he pulled out an energy drink.
With a click, the cap of the brown bottle came off, and he held it out toward Cheonga.
Startled by the unexpected kindness, a flustered voice slipped out of her.
“W-why…?”
Grinning, Yushin took her hand and pressed the vitamin supplements from the bag into it as well.
“You seemed to like them.”
“Huh?”
“You ate two while cleaning the other day.”
Cheonga’s face flushed bright red.
—One or two won’t be noticeable… right?
That careless thought came back to her—the day she’d cleaned Yushin’s room and seen piles of energy drinks stacked up.
Her stomach had been burning, so she’d taken one.
And then another.
I mean, there were dozens piled up like trash. How did he even notice?
Cheonga squeezed her eyes shut.
Seeing that, Yushin burst out laughing.
“Ah… haha. Ha. Hah… thank you.”
“Oh, it’s fine. Go ahead, drink up. You can have as many as you want. It’s not even my money. This much, I can give you plenty.”
With a deathly pale face, Cheonga shoved the vitamins into her mouth and gulped down the energy drink. She finished the whole bottle, but it felt like the vitamins were still stuck in her throat.
“Th-then I’ll be going nowww!”
And the moment she backed out of the room, she started sprinting at full speed.
This is insane, seriously…!
As she left the lab, the image of Yushin smiling with his eyes gently curved lingered in her vision.
She couldn’t tell whether the discomfort was from the vitamins stuck in her throat or from her heart pounding after running so hard.
“Ah… so embarrassing. Did he dig through the trash? How did he know?”
Cheonga thumped her chest repeatedly, letting out sigh after sigh.
“But why does he keep smiling like that, damn it—it makes my heart hurt. No, wait. Why does my heart hurt? He’s forty. Forty years old! He’s an old man. No—does that face really belong to a forty-year-old? Crazy. So suspicious.”
At the same time, back in the lab Cheonga had fled from, Yushin quickly tapped his in-ear device, calling Chamkae.
[Uh, Scalpel.]
“Channel 29. Connect me, now.”
[Now? I’m busy.]
“I’m busier. I planted a bug on the meerkat.”
Loud laughter burst out through the earpiece.
[Again? Damn, you’re really good at this. You even got her to take it. Did you force-feed her? Or did you seduce her with your face?]
“Stop talking nonsense. It’s urgent.”
The sound of furious typing and muttering followed.
[Ah… I’m seriously busy too. I’m decrypting something. You’re out there fooling around, so I have to work.]
“……”
[I’m running a brute force right now, but the key space is way too wide. And the Morse code scheme itself doesn’t even match. You saw the cipher too, right? Don’t you think we need to call in a specialist?]
“Don’t worry about it. It’s nothing important.”
At Yushin’s indifferent reply, a brief silence fell.
[Wait, Scalpel. Don’t tell me you already cracked it. You did, didn’t you? You decoded it!]
Chamkae began chattering excitedly, demanding to see the decrypted message.
