The night passed without incident.

Having finished her rounds, Da Jung returned to the desk to organize charts and complete nursing records. After checking morning examinations, prescriptions, and surgery schedules, she glanced at the clock – it was nearly 3 AM. She did some light stretching, firmly pressing around her neck. The night shift was a battle against sleep.

Nothing had happened. Thankfully.

She hoped the deep, settled silence would continue until morning. Surprising things happened constantly in the hospital. Da Jung still remembered the warmth of the 486g baby she had held in her hands. That baby, nicknamed Teuneuni, lived for just two days in the NICU before becoming a star. The same was true for other babies.

In the quiet predawn hours, she prayed to the stars. Come back in an even more beautiful form, she said. The indelible weight of life pressed heavily on her heart. It grew heavier and heavier. She thought that one day she might be crushed to death, unable to bear the weight in her heart.

‘Let’s wake up a bit.’

She made a cup of warm green tea.

Just then, a call broke the silence.

‘Where from?’

Da Jung reflexively checked the clock on the wall. The LED clock on the wall emitted the light showing AM 3:28. It was not a good time. Bad things in obstetrics tended to happen in the early morning hours.

When she realized the call was coming from room 707, bed 5, Da Jung’s heart sank. It was the most high-risk mother in the entire ward. The time she had been praying would pass without emergency shattered like glass.

“I’ll go check.”

As she hurried, she thought of the pale-faced mother in bed 5.

Kim Hye Jin. 33 years old. Single fetus. 26 weeks.

The mother had been hospitalized for a month and a half, admitted at 20 weeks. Her cervix, weakened by frequent IVF treatments, had begun dilating from mid-pregnancy, putting her at serious risk of premature labor. She had endured long, tedious hours lying in bed 24 hours a day.

She ate lying down and showered only once a week. Enduring was the only way for the baby to survive. The high-risk pregnancy intensive care unit was a place where one simply had to endure and endure.

Da Jung quietly opened the door and headed to bed 5.

“Mrs. Kim Hye Jin. Are you alright?”

Generally, fetuses surpass 1kg upon reaching 28 weeks, at which point survival rates increase dramatically. The primary goal for all high-risk mothers coming to the hospital was 28 weeks. And Kim Hye Jin was in the middle of her 26th week.

She had lived like a corpse for a month and a half, and now the summit was just ten days away.

“Ah, nurse. I… I’m having contractions.”

Da Jung squeezed her eyes shut. There was no time to waste.

“I’ll increase the Labetalol dose and do a contraction test.”

She checked the IV drip and quickly prepared the NST (contraction testing machine). Familiar with the procedure, the mother cooperated swiftly, lifting her back. As soon as the test began, regular, strong contractions were detected. Ah. Everything went black before her eyes. Da Jung asked rapidly:

“When did the contractions start? Is anything flowing from below?”

“The dull pain started right after dinner. I fell asleep but woke up because my belly kept hurting. I don’t think anything is flowing.”

“I’ll call the on-duty professor. It’s an emergency.”

There was no time to delay. As she turned quickly to leave, the mother grabbed Da Jung’s hand. Her hand trembled like an aspen leaf.

“Nurse… will the baby be alright?”

She didn’t know. Da Jung’s eyes habitually stopped on the machine screen. In truth, it wasn’t good. The graph showed strong, fast, and regular patterns. It looked like those of mothers beginning labor.

At this point, medication would be useless. Da Jung thought she should call pediatrics to secure a NICU spot as she answered:

“Haetsari will be fine.”

After about a month and a half of hospitalization, mothers and nurses become half friends. They open up, sharing not just the baby’s nickname but where they live, their hobbies, even their husband’s job. Yes, Kim Hye Jin was practically Da Jung’s friend.

An hour later.

After being examined by the on-duty professor, Kim Hye Jin was finally taken to the delivery room. Despite the mother’s desperate wishes, the baby decided it was time, slipping out of the birth canal to take its first step into the world. Pediatrics was put on alert. Long tubes dangled all over the baby’s body.

Morning came.

“Nurse Yoon. You had a tough night.”

The early-arriving nurses greeted her.

Da Jung thought about 774g Haetsari. Though expecting self-respiration would be possible thanks to the lung maturity injections given in advance, she recalled the long, difficult time ahead and the numerous complications to be endured.

“It’s nothing. The mother and baby had it tough. I’ll head in now.”

The sunlight was piercingly bright on her way home. Tears came to her eyes, stinging from the sunlight on the day Haetsari was born.

[This is the timeline separator]

The door of a black sedan standing in the middle of the smoke-filled road opened, and a man stepped out. He carelessly brushed off his suit, which was a mess of blood and dust, and tossed the gun he was holding onto the roadside. Mixing a long sigh with his tired, heavy gait, he looked around with a lonely expression.

Among the dozens of people lying on the ground, no one was moving. His dark eyes gleamed sharply. Hurrying his steps, he approached the man collapsed in the center and snatched the bag from his grasp. Hmph. The sneer created by lifting just one corner of his mouth was as cold as the Arctic. The man slowly walked away, bathed in the rising sun.

“Cut!”

Director Ma Young Jun, who had been watching the monitor, clapped his hands and shouted triumphantly.

“Good work everyone!”

“Thank you for your hard work!”

“It’s a wrap!”

As soon as the director gave the signal, hundreds of staff members who had been holding their breath finally cheered in joy. The final shoot of the movie “The Gray Man”, which had been running non-stop for a year, was over. It was a project where everyone, without exception, had worked hard due to the many experimental attempts.

“Hyung! Good job!”

Manager Byung Hoon approached the man and took his gunpowder-scented jacket, passing it to the stylist. Stylist Soo Mi briefly looked at the jacket stained with blood makeup with a frown before stuffing it into a bundle of clothes.

“Wow. It’s finally over. Oppa, you really worked so hard on this movie.”

“You all worked hard too.”

The man smiled, heavily closing his tired eyes. Although his face was settled with deep fatigue, his finely chiseled features seemed to shine even more clearly. Soo Mi stared blankly at that unreal face for a while before leaving to pack up her things.

The man went around greeting the director and staff one by one. Meanwhile, the sun had fully risen, spreading a bright autumn morning.

“The sun’s up.”

Byung Hoon muttered.

“Wow. It really was a killer year.”

Only after the noisy filming site was somewhat cleaned up did the man climb into his van. He buried himself deep in the chair and closed his eyes for a moment. The stylist handed him a neck massager and warm green tea. The man, who hadn’t had a sip of water throughout the shoot, downed the green tea in one go and opened another bottle of water.

“Hyung. Can I have your phone?”

“Sure.”

The phone was placed in the man’s hand. The man rotated both shoulders a couple of times to stretch and turned on the phone. There were a few casual greetings and some advertising contacts piled up.

Although he had natural good stamina and had approached most shoots without even realizing how hard they were, this movie was tough enough to require using up all his strength to the limit. There were particularly many action scenes, and most of them were outdoor shoots, so he had been rolling around non-stop in mountains, fields, seas, and roads. It was a year where he had filmed action scenes to his heart’s content.

“The CEO says you should rest for a while too, Hyung. Says you haven’t properly rested since your debut.”

“I should.”

The man, who had been looking at the piercingly bright sky, shifted his gaze back to his phone. As if by habit, he opened the cafe app and logged into his fan cafe. It was an important daily routine that he would never give up, even if his heavy eyelids were weighing down his body.

She was there. An undisguisable soft smile spread across the man’s lips.

[This is the timeline separator]

As soon as she got home, Da Jung took a shower and ended up opening a can of beer. The refreshing scent of alcohol stung her throat as it went deep into her stomach. The tangy, stinging sensation pricked her body.

[Yoon Da Jung. I heard from noona. Something bad happened at the hospital? Still, don’t have morning beer. Think about your gastritis. AM 7:11]

There was a message from Kyung Jun, a close friend she could call family, but Da Jung ignored his nagging. It was a day when the pain in her heart was worse than the pain in her stomach. On days like this, she needed the power of alcohol a little. Because she was a weak human, and the weight of life was always too solemn.

[Already drank it. AM 9:30] [You’re driving me crazy. AM 9:31]

Please, let nothing happen to the baby.

Barely reading Kyung Jun’s message, she put down her phone. After some troubled thoughts, she turned on her laptop and logged into actor Lee Jae Ho’s fan cafe. It was a routine and precious daily task that had continued for three years. Da Jung was one of the administrators of Lee Jae Ho’s fan cafe.

Da Jung’s escape.

As soon as she logged in, she checked the report board, withdrew illegal advertising IDs, and deleted spam posts. Illegal advertisements tirelessly appeared every day, so they had to be checked frequently. Even though five administrators deleted them regularly, the ads kept popping up endlessly like weeds.

“Ah. These ads are really evolving cleverly…”

Afterwards, she went to the waiting list for membership applications, checked the applied IDs, and verified the questions and answers. A total of 11 people had applied, and Da Jung approved 7 of them. IDs with wrong answers could never be accepted.

“How can you join a fan club when you don’t even know Lee Jae Ho’s debut date.”

Muttering to herself with a mix of irritation, Da Jung went to the free board and quickly scanned through the posts with her eyes. There was no special news today either. These days, our actor is living a very busy life with movie filming.

Most of the newly uploaded chat posts were complaints about missing him.

[When on earth will our actor’s movie end? I miss him. Waaah.]

“Yes. That’s right. I miss him too.”

Da Jung muttered to herself, mixing in a long sigh as she sipped her beer. It was already past 10 AM, and the living room was filled with sunlight. As she looked at the sunlight, she suddenly thought of the baby in the NICU.

May the sunlike hope reach the baby too.

On a day like this, how nice it would be if my actor posted something on SNS. Da Jung had this idle thought as she habitually wrote a daily post on the free board.