Dark Matter | JJK

39. In the Time of Love

Jeon Jungkook walked down the stark white corridors of Seoul National University Hospital, nose scrunching at the thick layer of disinfectant and medicine blanketing the air. Every now of then, he swerved to the side as nurses carrying patients in stretchers rushed past him into operating theatres, the occasional agonised scream from a room slicing through his ears like a blade. After crossing a partially crowded vestibule, he pushed open a door labelled Intensive Care Unit E6, and stepped inside. 

 In one corner of the room, sorting through injections and cotton swabs on a trolley, stood a nearly fifty year-old-man in a lab coat. He looked up at the boy and clicked his tongue in annoyance. 

"This is your thirty-sixth visit here, I presume?" 

Jungkook ignored his jibe, walking over to the doctor and removing a plastic-covered glass vial from his own lab coat. An azure-blue liquid sloshed inside when he held vial out to the older man. "J.0," Jungkook said, gesturing to the substance. "Kindly conduct the test and report the results to me."

The doctor snatched the vial from him and squinted at it, his hawk-like nose twitching with disdain. "I've been tolerating this nonsense of yours since the past month, young man. You come here everyday with some different coloured liquid, call it a potential antidote and waste hours of my time getting me to test it on a subject. Do you think we doctors have nothing better to do?" 

Jungkook tongued the inside of his cheek, placing his hands on his hip. He was more than accustomed to the elderly man's sneers and taunting remarks by now, but it didn't irk him any less. Old men and their hopeless inability to let go of their egos. "The testing would take less than fifteen minutes if you cut down on your bickering and do what you're supposed to, Dr Song." 

"How dare you speak back to me like that?!" the doctor glared up at the boy, the grey stubble across his cheeks glinting with malice. "And why should I keep administering your samples on my patient? Who knows if it's another poison made by that murderous father of yours —"

"I think that's enough for a day, Dr Song." 

Jung Hoseok stood leaning against the door of the ICU, hands stuffed in the pockets of his white coat, regarding Dr Song with a blank stare starkly different from the ever-present, cheery expression he donned. 

"All of us here are working to save our country," Hoseok said, pushing himself straight and walking inside. "It would be nice if we could set aside our biases and work together instead of questioning each other's intentions at every step." 

The older man had no comeback ready this time, simply tossing an indignant scowl in the younger doctor's direction before waddling to the centre of the room, where four thick green curtains hung from stands arranged in a rectangle. He grumbled angrily under his breath, something along the lines of who do these idiot teenagers think they are to talk about saving the world, and disappeared behind the curtains. 

"Hi there, Kookster," Hoseok beamed, drawing the attention of the boy away from the curtains by lightly punching his arm. "Everything okay?" 

"Hey, hyung," Jungkook greeted, grinning. "Everything's as okay as it can be right now. How's the condition in the hospital?" 

"Terrible," Hoseok admitted honestly, smile dimming by a few notches. It was then that Jungkook noticed the sheen of sweat coating Hoseok's neck and his scrubs stained with blood, probably not his own. "We have very few ICUs and too many injured civilians and captured Aenigmi. Nor do we have sufficient resources or equipment. I know for a fact we won't be able to continue for long if things keep going at the pace they are right now, but I'm hoping we figure out something before we're forced to give up."