43. Jae
Chapter forty-three
Jae
Sharp, stuttering light pulses against the inside of my eyelids. I crack one eye against it.
On the nightstand, my phone is a flat, pulsing rectangle of violent white, throwing off notifications so fast they smear into a liquid static across the display. They stack, collide, and cannibalize each other before my half-glutted brain can parse a single word.
My thumb finds the sensor on autopilot. The lock screen yields, and the notifications hit like a physical blow—stacking, scrolling, and bleeding into a smear of text:
Entertainment Weekly: KAI RYU SPOTTED IN LOS ANGELES? Fans Identify Former Idol in Campus Video. Soompi: Breaking: Crown it’s a living, breathing quiet.
The sharp bite of industrial bleach hits my nostrils first, underlined by the rich, comforting warmth of damp fur, cedar shavings, and the low, mechanical thrum of the kennel block dryers down the hall.
I head straight for the back corner of the locker room.
Spinning the combination on my battered grey locker, I yank the metal door open, grab my buzzing personal phone, and shove it violently onto the top shelf, burying it behind a spare, stiffly starched scrub top I never wear.
I don’t look at the screen. I don’t check the notification counts.
I slam the door shut, the metal ring echoing off the tile like a gunshot.
The blue scrubs go on next. Coarse cotton, faded to a washed-out slate blue from industrial bleach cycles, soft only where the seams rub against my shoulders.
The moment the fabric settles over my skin, my nervous system reacts with a physical shudder of relief—my shoulders drop two inches, my lungs remember how to expand, and my heart rate cuts its speed in half.
The transformation requires no mirror. The scrubs aren't a disguise; they are armor.
When I step out of the locker room into the treatment corridor, I am no longer an international fugitive hiding behind an alias or the protagonist of a viral internet panic.
I am Jae Kim, veterinary clinical assistant, and the parameters of my universe have suddenly shrunk down to vitals, charts, and pulse rates.
At the scrub sink, I pump the generic pink soap—the harsh, unscented kind that strips the moisture right off your knuckles. I scrub to my elbows, counting thirty slow seconds in my head, rinse under scalding water, and dry with a paper towel that shreds instantly against my palms.
I check the white assignment board by the central desk.
Kennel 3. Post-op female Cocker Spaniel. Routine spay yesterday. Q4H vitals, IV line active, surgical site clean at 0600. Discharge at 1500.
I pull the clipboard from the rack and push through the swinging doors into the recovery ward.
The spaniel is awake. She’s curled tight on a blue fleece pad, weighed down by a hard plastic Elizabethan collar that makes her look like a bewildered satellite dish.
Her liquid brown eyes lock onto me the second my boots hit the rubber flooring—wide, dark, and entirely unburdened by human bullshit.
I crouch beside the stainless-steel run, sliding the latch open with a soft metallic scrape.
“Hey, girl,” I murmur, keeping my voice low and level, pitching it below the hum of the overhead lights. “How are we holding up?”
Her tail gives one sluggish, heavy thump against the fleece—not the frantic helicopter spin of a fully recovered dog, but the groggy, trusting acknowledgment of someone who recognizes a safe variable in a confusing room.
I slide my hand into the enclosure, letting her sniff my knuckles before resting my palm flat against her warm ribcage.
Her heart is hammering a little fast under my fingertips—twelve hours post-anesthesia, perfectly expected—but the rhythm is steady and strong. Her gums are a healthy, pale bubblegum pink. Respiration is even, shallow, unlabored.
With gloved fingers, I lift the edge of the surgical drape to inspect the incision.
The line is clean. No weeping, no angry red inflammation at the margins, no swelling.
The surrounding skin is warm, but free of fever heat.
I tap the metrics onto my clipboard with sharp, blocky strokes of my pen—the exact handwriting my professors have spent three years complaining is too neat, too compressed, too guarded to read at a glance.
The spaniel blinks up at me, her gaze heavy with lingering sedatives.
She doesn’t care that my phone is entombed in a locker forty meters away.
She doesn't care that a dozen cameras are currently staking out the front lobby hoping to catch a glimpse of Kai Ryu’s profile.
She cares only that my hand is warm, my voice doesn't shake, and I am not causing her pain.
It is the cleanest, most honest dynamic I have left in the world.
I finish the IV fluid rate check, scratch her gently behind the velvety fold of her left ear where the plastic cone can't reach, and watch her eyes drift half-shut again.
Back at the small desk in the charting alcove, I pull the rolling chair out and sit down. The plastic pen feels heavy and real between my fingers.
Respiratory rate: 22 breaths/min. Capillary refill: <2 seconds. Pain score: 1.
These are variables with absolute answers. These are problems that can be solved with arithmetic and patience, completely divorced from the digital conflagration raging outside these concrete walls.
I am not Kai Ryu today.
The fact settles heavy in my gut. I am Jae Kim. I have a post-op cocker spaniel going home at three o'clock, a stack of pharmacology flashcards waiting in my backpack, and an entire universe of noise that has absolutely no jurisdiction over this room.
The crack in the anonymity is there—I can feel it hairline-fracturing right down the middle of my life, wide enough now that I'll never quite seal it shut again. The video is out. The connection has been made. The algorithm has already fucking digested me.
I don't know how the hell I'm going to fix it when my shift ends.
But I know how to finish this row of numbers. I know how to keep my hands steady. I know how to sit in a quiet, sterile room with a pen in my fist and let the rest of the world burn itself out trying to find a ghost that isn't here anymore.
The pen moves. The numbers fall into their boxes. Outside, the noise keeps rising.
Let it.
I have a dog to check on.