Chapter 140: The Kiss Scene
Chapter 140: The Kiss Scene
A sudden surge of anxiety rose inside him.
It wasn’t too late yet.
He tried to slowly back away and slip out of his seat.
But his father suddenly grabbed his arm and forced him to sit back down.
“Where are you going? Watch it with us.”
“No, my stomach hurts a bit…”
“Don’t lie. You were perfectly fine just a moment ago.”
His father was stubborn.
“When will we ever get another chance to watch the live broadcast together with the lead actor who’s actually in the drama?”
“No, that’s not the problem…”
“Oh! It’s starting! Oppa is coming on!”
Ah, whatever.
Fine.
It was just showing his work in front of his parents. What was the big deal?
Thinking that, he turned his eyes toward the television.
Robert Moon’s heart transplant surgery had succeeded.
But Alicia’s expression still refused to return to calm.
Part of her mind kept replaying the moment of the accident. The collapsing Galahall after the explosion, the chaos of blood and smoke mixing together. And the face of Han Jusin, who had led the surgery.
He hadn’t cared about the dignity of the royal family, the hospital director’s gaze, or the scrutiny of the press. He had looked at only one thing: whether the patient could be saved.
“The one who should die is not the patient, but death.”
Even that overly dramatic sentence now felt strangely comforting.
The exaggerated metaphors, the cringe-worthy dramatic lines, the long declarations. At first they had seemed embarrassing. Now they felt reassuring.
“Why are you doing this, Black Flame Dragon…”
A strange change had begun to appear on Han Jusin’s side as well.
Originally, he was someone who never involved himself in other people’s emotions. Whether someone cried, got angry, or grew irritated, he simply categorized it as a physiological response and moved on.
The sympathetic nervous system is overly stimulated.
Excess dopamine, or serotonin deficiency.
But recently, his gaze kept drifting toward Alicia.
During night shifts, when she sat leaning against the wall at the end of the hallway with a tired face, he would always happen to pass by.
“You must have elevated cortisol. Your skin looks rather dry.”
His tone alone sounded far from kind.
But in his hand was a warm cup of yuja tea he had bought from the convenience store.
He casually set it down on the table and said while avoiding eye contact, “Excess caffeine reduces sleep quality. That… is relatively safe.”
After saying it like a medical recommendation, he turned away.
The tips of his ears had turned slightly red.
Han Jusin found this unfamiliar.
He had never grown close to anyone. Never shown kindness.
Whenever he showed weakness to someone, he always felt like he might soon be abandoned.
Han Jusin’s emptiness had deep roots.
From childhood he had always been called a genius. He grew up surrounded by adults’ expectations earlier than his peers. Academic performance came before friendships.
Once, when faced with a problem he didn’t know, he had said, “I don’t know.”
The response he received wasn’t a kind explanation.
“You’re supposed to be a genius. You don’t even know this?”
It was ridicule and disappointment.
Ah. I’m someone who isn’t allowed to not know.
From that day on, he became more afraid of admitting ignorance than of being wrong.
So he layered on defense mechanisms.
Like the animation he loved watching alone. The exaggerated lines of heroes. The grand declarations about saving the world.
To others, they sounded childish.
But to Han Jusin, they were the safest language he knew.
“Go wild… Black Flame Dragon…”
He replayed those lines dozens, hundreds of times in his mind.
He had lived like that, forgetting loneliness.
But at some point cracks began to form.
The direction of their relationship changed one day not long afterward.
Another patient arrived at the hospital.
This time it was a twelve-year-old boy.
He had congenital heart disease but possessed extraordinary talent, so much that he was called a ballet prodigy. Even slight exertion tightened his chest, causing his heart to race until he could barely breathe.
For a child whose entire life was the stage, the instability of his heart meant his entire world was shaking.
A video of the boy’s ballet performance played briefly on a monitor.
Perfect rotations.
Unwavering toes.
A delicate balance that seemed to stop the audience’s breathing.
But above all that perfection lingered a fearful expression, the obsession that he must not fall.
Han Jusin watched the monitor silently.
Then he slowly leaned back in his chair.
The boy asked carefully, “Doctor… can I keep doing ballet?”
His young eyes pierced toward him.
Han Jusin pressed his lips together for a moment before answering, “I’m entering the operating room to create the answer to that question.”
During the preparation period for the surgery, Han Jusin became unusually obsessed with the case.
He reviewed academic papers again and searched through overseas research. He even sketched surgical plans by hand, running simulations from multiple angles.
Fortunately, the surgery ended like a miracle.
The boy’s heart began beating normally again, and his numbers stabilized. His condition improved enough for him to move to a regular hospital room.
But the real problem came afterward.
His body was recovering, yet every night the boy woke up from nightmares.
“I don’t know if I can perform on stage again… If I go back, I feel like I won’t be able to breathe… like I’ll collapse…”
His heart had recovered.
But the boy had developed trauma.
The most frightening thing wasn’t losing the stage. It was the fear that if he stepped onto the stage again, he might collapse once more.
His body was ready.
But his heart wasn’t.
That gap had appeared.
Watching the boy who strangely resembled himself, Han Jusin became especially attentive.
One day he saw Alicia sitting beside the boy through a slightly open door.
“Jiho, you don’t actually want to quit ballet, do you?”
The boy nodded.
Tears gathered in his eyes.
“I… want to stand on stage. But… I’m scared. If I go back… maybe…”
Before he could finish, Alicia gently interrupted.
“That’s normal.”
“Normal…?”
She didn’t know ballet very well.
But she knew that to stand on stage, it wasn’t your toes that had to stand first. It was your heart.
“Jiho’s heart has finished preparing to beat. But Jiho’s mind is still preparing for rehearsal.”
The boy paused.
“But Jiho, the stage won’t run away. It will stay there until your heart is ready. And when you’re ready, you can step onto it.”
Alicia smiled warmly.
The tension slowly eased from the boy’s face.
“So… it’s not my feet practicing right now, but my heart…?”
“That’s right. Jiho is very smart, isn’t he?”
Watching from the doorway, Han Jusin felt an unfamiliar emotion rising deep inside his chest.
Strangely, it felt like he himself had been comforted.
A person who wouldn’t respond with disappointment or ridicule when someone said I don’t know.
Perhaps such a person could exist.
That thought quietly settled in his heart.
From that day onward, the two gradually grew closer as if the empty spaces in their lives were slowly fitting together.
Of course, it wasn’t only sentimental moments.
They bickered. They clashed over different opinions. They worried about patients together. And felt relief together.
As time passed, their emotions slowly began to take shape.
The first to act was Alicia.
She realized quickly that Han Jusin was almost completely inexperienced in romance.
He was intelligent but awkward with people, and younger than she was.
So she decided to approach him more honestly, sometimes boldly and sometimes playfully.
One night their night-duty schedules overlapped.
After finishing rounds, Han Jusin opened the duty-room door as usual.
A thermos lunchbox sat on the desk.
Just then the door opened.
“Oh, you finally came.”
Alicia walked over naturally and sat beside him.
“Let’s eat together.”
“…Together?”
“Yes. Professor, your eating habits are terrible, so I decided to take care of you a little.”
Han Jusin froze.
“…Why take care of me?”
“Because I want to.”
It was incredibly simple.
Was she always like this?
Han Jusin stopped while lifting his spoon.
“…Doesn’t doing something like this… burden someone?”
“Huh?”
“I also… have to give something back… according to… human society’s… exchange rules…”
“Then give something back.”
“How?”
Alicia looked at him for a moment.
Then suddenly closed her eyes and leaned her face toward him.
Han Jusin panicked and leaned back about a handspan. His face quickly turned red up to his ears.
Seeing that, Alicia chuckled.
“Why did you move back? Did you misunderstand something?”
“M-misunderstand?”
“I meant you feeding me.”
“Ah…”
He froze completely.
So still that the ticking of the clock became audible.
The duty room fell silent.
Alicia found his stiff reaction adorable. She tried to hold it in but eventually burst out laughing.
“Hahaha!”
Then she leaned closer, this time truly closing the distance she intended.
So close that Han Jusin had no room to retreat.
He froze entirely.
His posture, his eyes, his hands, even his breathing.
Only his heart continued beating rapidly.
“Is that beating right now the heart of the Black Flame Dragon?”
“……”
Han Jusin was speechless.
His lips trembled but no words came out.
Alicia Yoon smiled softly and tilted her head slightly.
“I don’t think so. I think it’s Han Jusin’s heart.”
Then she lightly pulled the collar of his coat with her fingers and kissed him.
It was a brief kiss.
But because it was brief, it felt suffocatingly intense.
“You seem like you don’t know, but you also seem like you can’t say you don’t know. So I confirmed it through a clinical test.”
Alicia smiled.
“It’s Han Jusin’s heart, right?”
Han Jusin’s eyes trembled.
His breathing lost rhythm, tension spreading to the tips of his fingers.
Before the trembling could settle, Han Jusin leaned toward her.
This time the kiss was deeper and stronger than before.
Their breaths collided. The sound of their hearts echoed through their coats. The distance between them disappeared until nothing remained but breath.
“Mom! Mom! Oppa is eating that noona! And he’s doing it on TV!”
The moment the kiss scene began, his younger sister pointed and screamed.
“Oh my…”
His mother covered her mouth in shock, unable to speak.
Meanwhile, his father said, “That brat. He’s a real man,” and gave Sunho a thumbs-up.
Even without looking in a mirror, Sunho knew his face had turned bright red. Watching his own kiss scene, especially one this intense, together with his parents felt unbelievably embarrassing.
“My son… is kissing… goodness…”
“Of course he is. He’s an actor. And our son’s already a grown man. Even if it wasn’t acting, he could handle a kiss just fine.”
His father grinned.
“He might’ve done it plenty of times where we can’t see. Right, Sunho?”
“You! Do you really have to say that right now?!”
His mother, her face red like a tomato, smacked his father’s back.
Sunho sank deeper into the sofa.
This was absolutely not okay.
He needed to change the subject quickly.
“Th-the song playing in the background… I sang it.”
“Oh my? You’re right! That’s Sunho’s voice!”
“Wow, our Nureongi has debuted as a singer now?”
Fortunately, it worked.
His parents’ attention shifted to the song.
“It’s so good, Sunho. I already thought this song was nice, but hearing it in our son’s voice makes it even better. It’s so touching.”
“Whose son do you think he is? That singing is incredible. Definitely my son.”
Only then did Sunho breathe out in relief.
The next morning he woke up early and prepared to return to Seoul.
But a savory smell filled the house.
Huh?
When he went into the kitchen, his father was wearing an apron.
“Son, you’re awake?”
“Dad? What are you doing?”
“To boost your energy.”
Somewhere he had obtained a thick eel, and it sizzled on the grill.
“I also bought black garlic extract. Take it with you when you go back to Seoul.”
“…Why?”
“Why else? Because you’ll need it.”
He probably didn’t.
“Don’t misunderstand. I’ve been preparing this for days in case your stamina dropped from acting and traveling to the UK.”
His father smiled meaningfully.
“You need to keep showing good acting in the future. Especially acting like yesterday.”
Well, it was true his schedule had been exhausting lately, and it had been a long time since his father cooked. So he decided to accept it gratefully.
“Thank you for the meal.”
“Good. Eat the tail first.”
While eating the eel his father grilled, his younger sister suddenly burst out of her room.
“Oppa! Oppa! It’s huge news!”
“What?”
“The song you sang is going crazy right now!”
She was holding her phone, her face more excited than anyone’s.
“The music chart ranking right now—!”