Shin was a doctor who carried the weight of countless lives on his shoulders.
Every scalpel cut, every order given, every moment of hesitation meant the difference between life and death. And tonight, that burden pressed harder than ever.
While working, an urgent call had dragged him from one operating room to another. His superiors had demanded his hands for a VIP patient, an influential figure whose death would shake politics and headlines.
But there was one problem.
Even as the call came for him to prepare the operating room for the VIP, another patient was already waiting; a young woman, pale from blood loss, trembling hands clutching desperately at her husband's. Her clothes were shredded from a car accident, glass embedded in her skin, her pulse faint beneath the blood-slick sheets.
Shin's eyes darted between her vitals and the incoming orders from above. His gut clenched. "She doesn't have time. If I don't act now…"
"Doctor Shin!" The senior administrator rushed in, his voice taut with urgency. "The Director says you're needed for the Chairman. He collapsed from a cardiac arrest. They want you in the OR immediately."
Shin froze, his eyes narrowing. "What about her?" He gestured to the woman, whose chest rose in weak, shallow gasps. "She came in first. She's bleeding out. If she's not operated on in the next few minutes, she'll go into shock."
The man hesitated. "The Director said another surgeon will handle her. You're the only one qualified to perform the bypass on the Chairman."
Shin's jaw tightened. "That's not good enough. Her condition is unstable. If she doesn't get immediate intervention—"
The senior administrator immediately grabbed him and pulled him to the side. His expression was cold, efficient. "Doctor Shin, this isn't up for debate. The Chairman's life outweighs this one case. Get to the OR."
Shin swallowed hard. His instincts screamed to stay, to fight, to refuse. He wanted to save her. He knew the risk.
But the administrator's hand clamped down on his shoulder, firm and immovable. "Trust the other surgeons. Your skills are wasted here. Do your duty."
"…Fine." Shin turned and ran at full speed to the room where the VIP was. Looking back, the last thing he saw before stepping into the next operating room was the husband's desperate grip on his wife's limp hand.
And in that moment, Shin knew that though he had saved one life, he had just condemned another.
Hours later he walked out of the room, drenched in sweat, only for his heart to shatter immediately. He heard the sobbing. The young woman had died on the table where another surgeon fumbled too late. Her husband's wails echoed in Shin's skull long after he stripped off his gloves.
By the time he walked out of the hospital, it was past midnight. His body was exhausted, his spirit hollow.
—
On the way home he had no energy, no expression not even a bit of joy for the life he had saved, he was completely hollow
Shortly after he stopped at a convenience store. The neon buzzed overhead as he grabbed an instant meal and a drink, too tired to cook.
Shin walked out of the convenience store, a bag of food in his hand. The night was quiet, the parking lot almost empty except for the buzzing streetlamp above his car.
He let out a tired sigh. His body was heavy, his head still full of the day's memories, the surgery, the lights, the shouts, the one life saved, the other lost. He hated how that woman's face still wouldn't leave him alone.
That's when he heard it.
Footsteps. Fast. Rushing toward him.
Shin started to turn, confusion flashing across his face when suddenly, a sharp, burning pain tore through his stomach. His breath caught, and his eyes widened in shock. He looked down and saw the knife buried deep in his lower abdomen, blood already pouring out around it.
Before he could even process it, he looked up and froze.
It was him. The husband. The man whose wife had died. His face was twisted with rage and grief, eyes bloodshot, and spit dripping from his mouth. He looked less like a man and more like a beast driven past the edge of sanity.
"You—" the man growled, his voice breaking as he slowly pulled out the knife. "You chose him over her!"
Shin collapsed against the side of his car, smearing blood across the metal. Shortly after, his legs gave out, and he slid to the ground, the plastic bag of food spilling instant noodles and a bottle rolling across the concrete road.
Shin gasped, crawling backwards while clutching at the wound. "Wait….I didn't…."
"You let her die!" the man screamed, as he got on top of him and drove the knife back back into Shin's stomach.
"Ghh—ahhh!!" His screams echoed across the empty lot.
The husband pressed in close, breath foul, eyes feral. He drove the knife down again, and again, each strike fueled by grief and hatred. Shin clawed at the man's arms, but his strength bled out with every second. Every stab stole more of it, until he could barely breathe.
The man above him kept muttering, half sobbing, half shouting. Curses mixed with broken cries of his wife's name. He looked more broken than human.
Shin's vision blurred. His body went weak. The pain was still there, but it was fading, getting distant. He could barely feel the cold concrete road against his cheek.
Then, darkness.
---
He floated.
Weightless. Silent.
There was no sound, no heartbeat, no breath. Only a void, black and infinite. Shin drifted through it like a leaf in bottomless water. He could not feel his body. Only thought remained.
"So this is death." He thought to himself as he slowly drifted through the empty void
No pearly gates. No fire. No judgment. Just emptiness.
At first, he welcomed it. A punishment for not saving the woman. But as the silence dragged on, unbearable and eternal, a deep unease settled in. Seconds stretched into years, years into forever.
And then, warmth.
Suddenly, Shin was pulled forward at an insane speed, dragged through endless corridors of light and shadow. He glimpsed an ocean hanging upside down. A tree with stars for leaves. Whispers that weren't words but concepts pressing against his skull until it hurt. And then—
This wasn't heaven nor hell, it was something else.
The pull grew stronger. Faster. His mind stretched thin, straining between breaking and becoming. At moments, he swore he could feel every nerve of a body reassembling, bones knitting, muscles wrapping, skin forming. Other times, he was nothing again, a spark about to be snuffed out.
Suddenly, his drifting stopped. The void around him rippled, and from the darkness, a massive serpent began to take shape. Its body was endless, woven from shadows and glimmers of faint starlight, eyes burning like distant suns.
For a moment, it only watched him, silent and unblinking. Then, without warning, its jaws opened wide.
Shin had no time to resist. The darkness rushed forward, swallowing him whole.
The next instant, he was standing though he couldn't remember how his feet touched the ground. Before him stretched a vast horizon, stars spilling endlessly in every direction. It was as though he stood at the very edge of the universe, gazing out into infinity.
Suddenly, a pair of eyes appeared in the dark, glowing like twin stars. Slowly, the outline of a figure took shape around them.
It looked like a constellation given form, a body of shadow filled with galaxies and drifting lights. Stars pulsed beneath its skin, shifting and burning with every faint movement. The figure had no mouth, no voice, yet unmistakably a female.
She raised her hand. Her fingertips stretched outward, trailing faint streams of stardust.
Shin's body trembled. He didn't know why, but something deep inside urged him to respond. Slowly, he lifted his own hand. When his finger tip brushed against hers, the void itself roared.
The world exploded with sound and light. A boom like thunder shook through him, vast and overwhelming, as if a star had collapsed and been born again in the same breath.
Suddenly, everything went white and a massive door stood in front of him. It stretched higher than anything he'd ever seen almost infinitely, carved with strange symbols.
Shin started running toward the massive door. For some reason, it felt like everything around him had slowed down. His steps dragged, his arms felt heavy, but he pushed forward anyway.
The closer he got, the bigger the door seemed until it was all he could see. Then, without a sound, it began to open.
A blinding light poured out, spilling over him. Before he could even react, the light swallowed him whole.
Shin's eyes popped open immediately and he gasped for air like a drowning man, lungs burning as though they had forgotten how to breathe. His vision was blurry at first, but slowly the shapes around him came into focus.
This wasn't a hospital. There were no fluorescent lights, no city skyline, no sirens.
Above him stretched a sky so blue it almost didn't feel real, scattered with soft white clouds that drifted lazily like they had all the time in the world.
Beneath his hands, he felt the earth. Real earth. Blades of grass tickled his palms. The ground was firm, solid, humming faintly with life. He dug his nails into it, clutching at the soil as though it might vanish if he let go. It didn't take him much time to realize this wasn't his world.