05.
[Uncle Lim Yong-seok: You’re going to work today, right? If you have time, come out an hour and a half early and help me organize the storage room.]
The next day, Jae-min had quite a bit of time left before going to his part-time job, so he was holed up at home resting. He was lying in bed reading manga when his phone vibrated with a message. After reading the content, Jae-min frowned.
“An hour and a half? Organizing the storage room? It feels like the extra work keeps increasing. Isn’t this too different from what we initially discussed?”
Jae-min grumbled to himself, about to send a reply with a lie saying it would be difficult to come in early because he had assignments to work on.
[Uncle Lim Yong-seok: Oh, and here’s a bonus for doing good work.]
[Deposit] Lim Yong-seok 500,000 won
The notification window seemed to glow golden. Jae-min immediately sent a reply.
[Of course I can. I’m really good at organizing.]
Then he sprang up and changed his clothes first. Humming a tune, Jae-min even found comfortable sneakers for work and put them on before opening the front door and going outside. Once again, he thought there was no better workplace than MLS Clinic.
“Jae-min, you’re here?”
As soon as he opened the clinic door and entered, he heard Yong-seok’s voice, but he couldn’t actually see him. Jae-min looked around and entered the Director’s office. In the corner inside the Director’s office, a door that was always closed was now wide open.
When he approached cautiously, it turned out that was indeed the storage room. Inside the cramped space cluttered with various items, Yong-seok was standing on a ladder, straining.
“Why the sudden storage room organizing?”
“Ah, we got some new medical equipment and various supplies coming in.”
“Oh, now that you mention it, there are tons of boxes here.”
There were towers of delivery boxes stacked up not only on the storage room floor but all over the Director’s office. Yong-seok came down from the ladder and wiped his sweat with his sleeve.
“Yeah, we need to organize quickly before the patients arrive. First, can you open those stacked boxes one by one? Even opening them is work. Ugh, my back hurts!”
“Yes, I’ll do it now.”
Jae-min started by dismantling the tower of boxes first. He took down the packages stacked high toward the ceiling and brought a box cutter to open them one by one. Inside the light boxes were cotton, gauze, and disposable gloves. Heavy boxes contained massage oils.
As Jae-min was opening the delivery boxes one by one, his gaze stopped under the Director’s office desk. There were several boxes there too. Jae-min bent his head down and squeezed his body under the desk to pull out a box.
“What is this that it’s so heavy?”
The box was quite large and considerably heavy. Jae-min tore off the tape with practiced hands and opened the box. Filling the delivery box tightly were more paper boxes. Against an eye-hurting bright red background, golden letters were stamped.
‘Buffalo Muscle Buster (RED)’
Jae-min squinted his eyes and scanned the letters, tilted his head, then slapped his knee.
“Ah!”
He wondered where he’d seen it before, and now he remembered. It was the muscle-building supplement that Hyun-woong had received as a gift at school and diligently took.
“What’s wrong?”
Hearing Jae-min’s voice, the sound of Yong-seok coming down from the ladder could be heard. Yong-seok quickly came out of the storage room.
“Uncle, why was this delivered to the clinic?”
Jae-min held up one box of ‘Buffalo Muscle Buster.’ Yong-seok, who had been squinting, said “Oh?” and rushed over hurriedly.
“Do you take this too, Uncle? No, but there’s way too much for that…”
“Ah, this! Oh my, so it was here.”
Yong-seok laughed “hehe” then snatched the medicine from Jae-min’s hand and stuffed it back into the delivery box.
“You know, among the customers who come to our clinic, there are a lot of people who are serious about fitness. They did a group purchase! They had the group purchase sent here.”
“What? Why are you even receiving patients’ deliveries for them?”
“Ah, well. It’s not like we don’t know each other… Anyway, you don’t need to organize this!”
Yong-seok fitted the red box back into the empty space perfectly and folded the box flaps closed again. Jae-min stared blankly at the bright red ‘Buffalo Muscle Buster’ boxes gradually disappearing from view and rubbed his chin.
‘Come to think of it, I guess there’s a red one besides the pink one.’
The medicine Hyun-woong took after working out was pink. It wasn’t just any color but a dazzlingly bright hot pink, so he definitely remembered it.
As Jae-min was rummaging through his memories, he suddenly blinked. The words Hyun-woong had said while asking him to keep his secret suddenly came to mind.
“Something keeps coming out of my chest, but it’s an illness that will heal soon.”
Hyun-woong must have assumed Jae-min didn’t know much about MLS and made up something vague. Since there was no separate medicine to take for treatment, and he was only receiving temporary relief through massage.
‘Or maybe he really thinks it’ll heal soon.’
Feeling uneasy and scratching his chin, Jae-min asked Yong-seok, who was busy putting the box back under the desk.
“Uncle, are there cases where MLS is completely cured?”
Yong-seok groaned as he crawled back out from under the desk. He ran his fingers through his disheveled hair and shrugged his shoulders.
“Sometimes there are cases where the milk dries up and stops coming out after receiving massage for a while. But there’s no perfect cure yet.”
“I see…”
Jae-min’s complexion darkened. At first, he had definitely found it amusing and interesting that none other than Hyun-woong, a symbol of masculinity itself, had contracted an illness that made him produce milk.
But now his mouth tasted bitter and his heart felt uncomfortable. A healthy man in his early twenties with an incurable disease seemed more pitiful than the tragic female lead in a sad movie.
He was frowning and staring into space when Yong-seok spoke to him.
“Oh, a new device came in. Want to see it?”
“A device?”
“Yeah, the one I just organized in the storage room. This one.”
Yong-seok pulled something out of his pocket with a flourish. It looked like some kind of stick, about the size of a large pen.
“What is that?”
“It’s a device for inverted nipples, you could say.”
“Like the stick-like thing you used before?”
“This is a more effective latest device than that. If you press it like this, like a pen, this part pops out.”
Click—when Yong-seok pressed the button on the back of the stick, something really did pop out. It was shaped like a round sponge tip.
“Touch it. Doesn’t it feel soft like a tongue?”
Jae-min touched the tip with his finger. It really was soft and felt somehow unpleasant.
“If you keep pressing it, the temperature rises. It has a heating device function.”
“Wow, that’s interesting.”
“And if you press this button, it even spins.”
“Whoa…”
When Yong-seok pressed the button in the middle, the tip really did spin around and around. Jae-min stared at the new device. It was a bit gross, but imagining stimulating a nipple with it was intriguing.
“I’ll keep it in the treatment room, so try using it next time if you need it. It’ll be useful for pulling out inverted nipples.”
Yong-seok pressed the button again to stop the device. Jae-min, who had been examining the device closely, nodded.
⁕⁕⁕
“Patient Kang Hyun-woong just went to the treatment room.”
“Okay, I’ll go.”
“Oh, Jae-min.”
After finishing organizing the storage room, taking a break, and when Hyun-woong’s appointment time arrived, Jae-min had already changed clothes and was waiting. He was about to head straight to the treatment room when Cheol-hui called him.
“Until now, you’ve always used the treatment space alone, right? With all the other rooms empty while you’re doing the massage.”
“Huh? Yes, that’s right. There’s always been just one patient that I’m in charge of.”
MLS Clinic had a structure similar to an orthopedic physical therapy room, so there were multiple treatment rooms. But every time Jae-min used them, all the other rooms were empty, with a curtain drawn only in one room.
“Our clinic values privacy, so we usually schedule appointments so they don’t overlap, but when there are many reservation patients, they do overlap sometimes.”
Cheol-hui pushed up his glasses and added a comment.
“Later, one of our staff members and another patient will be going into a room near the one you’re using, so just be aware. I’m telling you in advance so you won’t be surprised.”
“Ah… Yes, I understand.”
Jae-min bowed his head in greeting and immediately walked down the hallway. For now, there was still a person in just one treatment room as usual.
When he drew back the curtain, he saw a familiar person. Seeing Hyun-woong lying there slightly tense as always, Jae-min chuckled.
“I heard yesterday’s appointments were all full so you couldn’t come.”
