I'm Not Hurt Anymore
The MRI room door swung open and I stepped out, but my ears—still tuned to the machine’s relentless drone—kept ringing with a faint, phantom hum.
“The scan is finished,” the nurse said gently.
“Results should take about twenty to thirty minutes. Please wait a little. Once radiology finishes the reading, the orthopedic doctor will explain everything.”
Following her directions into the hallway, I caught the faint, familiar scent of hospital disinfectant. Cheon Sojin was still wound tight; she sat on a chair bouncing one leg restlessly.
“……Team Leader!”
She was so lost in thought she didn’t notice me until I was right in front of her. Only when I called out did she lift her head and look my way.
“……Ah, sorry. I had a few things on my mind. When do they say the results will be ready?”
“Twenty to thirty minutes. But Coach…… I mean, the instructor—where’d he go?”
Calling Kim Taehwan “Coach” was so deeply ingrained that the slip kept happening. I caught myself and switched to the proper title for this place: instructor.
“He went to eat.”
“Eat?”
“He said he skipped breakfast. He looked exhausted, so I told him I’d stay and he should go grab something.”
He’d looked completely wrecked earlier, but hunger must have won out in the end. Human instinct really was something else.
“Wow. His student gets hurt and he can still eat? The exam doesn’t even take that long and he can’t wait—goes off to eat by himself.”
She seemed so worried that I tossed out a light joke.
“Pfft.”
Cheon Sojin let out a short laugh. It didn’t last. She lowered her head again and quietly fixed her gaze on my elbow.
“……It’ll be okay, right?”
“Of course. It really doesn’t hurt anymore, I swear.”
As I said it I raised my arm and flexed it lightly. She flinched and tried to stop me, half-reaching, half-hesitating—unable to grab my arm yet unable to just sit still. The flustered look was pretty cute.
“Ah—ah! What are you doing?! Even so, don’t move it until the results come out. You never know.”
“Yes, ma’am. I’ll sit still.”
A brief silence settled. Then Cheon Sojin spoke with the air of someone who’d made up her mind.
“……Doyoon.”
She said my name quietly.
“Yes?”
“This training…… you didn’t push yourself too hard, did you?”
Her eyes stayed on my elbow. It wasn’t suspicion—just pure concern.
“Instructor Kim Taehwan mentioned it. Weighted-ball training always carries some injury risk. Because you’re using a ball that’s heavier than usual, it can put extra strain on the joints.”
Well, sure, that training could stress the elbow—but that wasn’t what happened. The Status Window had just decided on its own to fix the damn thing.
Damn it, at least check with me before you pull something like that. Don’t make everyone else worry over nothing.
Seeing how deeply Cheon Sojin fretted over me made me resent the Status Window for charging ahead with only a warning message and zero consultation.
“No, no. There was no problem during the training itself. The pain hit while I was cooling down and loosening up afterward…… Honestly, I don’t really know the cause either.”
“……I see.”
That was the last thing said. Silence stretched on and on.
Tick.
Tick.
Tick.
Tick.
Five minutes. Ten. Twenty. Finally thirty. Still no results.
“……It’s running a little late.”
“Yeah.”
The moment the words left our mouths, footsteps approached from the far end of the corridor. A nurse in a white coat hurried toward us, chart in hand.
“You’re Han Doyoon, correct?”
“Yes.”
“The MRI results are in. The orthopedic doctor wants to see you right away. Please come with me.”
Cheon Sojin shot to her feet.
I stood with Cheon Sojin and followed the nurse. Around the corner at the end of the hall we found a door labeled “Orthopedics Exam Room 2.”
Inside, a middle-aged doctor in a white coat sat in front of a monitor. He checked the chart, then frowned slightly.
“You’re Han Doyoon?”
“Yes.”
“You had Tommy John surgery two years ago, and afterward you developed stiffness that kept the arm from fully extending. That’s correct?”
“That’s right.”
The doctor moved the mouse and zoomed in on the screen.
“I’ll cut straight to it: the ligament is completely normal.”
Cheon Sojin’s head snapped up in surprise.
“Normal……?”
“Yes. No tear, no inflammation, no swelling of any kind. The graft site is perfectly clean.”
He pointed to one side of the image.
“Normally after Tommy John, tunnels are drilled into the bone to anchor the graft ligament. Those marks stay for life. But here…… the tunnels have completely filled in. New bone has grown and even restored the cortex. In short, the surgical traces are gone.”
Cheon Sojin stared in disbelief.
“Is that…… even possible?”
The doctor hesitated a moment, then nodded.
“It’s extremely rare, but it happens. In young patients with high muscle mass and excellent blood flow, the graft ligament can be fully absorbed and remodel into something indistinguishable from native tissue. We call it remodeling.”
He opened another image and tapped it with a finger.
“Look. There’s no visible boundary between the graft site and the original tissue. Usually you’d at least see suture lines or some fibrosis. This looks like a brand-new ligament.”
Cheon Sojin asked again.
“Even on an arm that had Tommy John complications?”
“That’s the even more interesting part.”
The doctor gave a light smile, though his expression stayed a little awkward.
“Complications usually mean surrounding tissue has stiffened or inflammation has recurred. Right now there’s no trace of any of that. During recovery the tissue remodeled so thoroughly that it’s actually cleaner than before.”
His gaze flicked between the screen and my arm. He was clearly astonished, yet still doing his best as a doctor to explain this “remarkable phenomenon.”
He’s really working hard to make sense of this……
Looking closer, his hair was a mess and his coat was wrinkled all over. He must have scrambled the whole short wait trying to figure out how to account for something this extraordinary.
“You said the pain hit suddenly that day, correct? Any high-intensity training or new routines?”
I thought for a second, then answered.
“Weighted-ball training. Throwing with a ball heavier than a regular one.”
The doctor nodded and made a note on the chart.
“That explains it. Weighted balls put significant load on the elbow. If the arm was already in the middle of healing, that load could have triggered a massive surge of blood flow. Sensory nerves would have overreacted, producing extreme pain even though there was no actual damage.”
I almost laughed out loud.
……So it really can be explained that way.
Honestly, I’d figured this was something medicine simply couldn’t account for. I’d half-worried we’d get a dramatic “This is an unexplainable miracle—we have to publish a paper immediately!” scene straight out of a TV drama. Instead the man was calmly laying out “increased blood flow” and “hypersensitive neural response,” translating the surreal into perfectly coherent medical language.
It can actually be explained like that……?
It was fascinating.
This was clearly an absurd phenomenon caused by the Status Window, yet the doctor was translating that miracle into the language of medicine with complete fluency.
Seeing me smile, he continued.
“This is a good thing. Cases like this are uncommon. It may even be a positive sign that regeneration is happening vigorously. The pain should disappear completely within a day or two.”
He started to close the chart, then paused. In a lower voice he added,
“……To be honest, I was pretty shocked myself.”
“Excuse me?”
“I’ve never seen an MRI like this. When the radiology report came up I thought there had to be a mistake. So I scrambled through the related literature. Cases of complete graft absorption, full reformation of bone tunnels, natural resorption of residual scar tissue from complications…… each of those exists, but only very rarely.”
He stopped, looking back and forth between me and Cheon Sojin.
“But all of them happening at once…… I’ve never seen it. Extremely rare events stacked on top of each other. The only way to put it is that an ‘impossible miracle’ occurred.”
Cheon Sojin’s eyes went wide.
“That significant?”
The doctor smiled lightly again, still looking a little awkward.
“Yes. Looking only at the MRI, this arm might as well never have been operated on. Theoretically possible, sure—but only in the realm of theory. I still can barely believe it.”
A cold sweat ran down my spine. Every time his eyes lingered on my arm, it twitched on its own.
……He’s not getting suspicious, is he?
I cleared my throat for no reason and hid the arm behind me.
Come on…… what lunatic would jump to “Status Window”? He’s just a doctor who’s properly amazed.
The doctor quickly composed himself and wrapped up.
“To summarize— the ligament has fully recovered, and the pain appears to be a temporary overstimulation response during the healing process. Just to be safe, monitor it for two or three days. If the pain doesn’t return, you can resume training after that.”
Cheon Sojin’s face finally relaxed; she let out a long breath.
“……I’m so relieved.”
The doctor nodded.
“If blood flow surges again you might get more pain, so ice it three times a day for twenty minutes each. And if there’s no pain, you’re free to return right away.”
“Understood.”
As we left the exam room Cheon Sojin murmured under her breath,
“An arm that still had Tommy John aftereffects…… and it can end up like this……”
“See? I told you I was fine.”
I raised my arm and flexed it deliberately. She flinched for a second at the motion, but after the doctor’s clean bill of health she had no grounds to stop me.
“Is Coach still eating? Any word from him?”
“Hmm…… no. Nothing yet.”
“I’ll try calling.”
I pulled out my phone and dialed Kim Taehwan.
Ring……
Ring……
Ring……
The tone went on and on. No one picked up.
—The call could not be connected. After the tone—
“He’s not answering.”
“Let me try.”
Cheon Sojin dialed as well.
Same result.
Twice. Three times. Four.
We took turns calling, but still no contact with Kim Taehwan.
She tilted her head.
“……Strange. He should’ve finished eating by now.”
“Yeah.”
“Well then, should we just go eat ourselves? Aren’t you hungry, Doyoon?”
“Ah—yeah.”
I was hungry, and fretting over a grown man not answering his phone for a bit felt ridiculous, so I walked out of the hospital without much thought.
Outside, the weather was perfect. A mild warmth wrapped around us—the kind that said summer was fading and autumn was on its way, pleasant rather than sticky.
Walking side by side with Cheon Sojin, I noticed a college couple on the sidewalk holding hands and laughing.
Bright sunshine.
A man and woman walking together.
It looked like a scene straight out of a coming-of-age film.
“Team Leader Cheon.”
“Hm? What is it?”
I glanced left without thinking.
Sunlight fell across her face; a few loose strands of hair drifted gently in the breeze.
Bright sunshine.
And……
“Did you think of something you want to eat?”
A man and woman walking side by side.
……Wait a second.
My heart suddenly hammered and tension spiked.
……Is this a date?